


The Vessel

by WhiteInkPenpal



Category: Naruto, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Amnesia, Character Study, Multi, Naruto AU, POV Haruno Sakura, POV Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Slow Build, Slow Burn, plot heavy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:17:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 36,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7543018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteInkPenpal/pseuds/WhiteInkPenpal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I started out as a girl without memories in a foreign land, and life took a turn for the worse after that. Sakura-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fall

The first thing she remembered was falling.

Her body ached, especially her stomach, and she could tell that her shoulder was dislocated and her ankle was sprained. How did she know this? Oh, she was a healer, yes, that's why. Her arms shook in restrained pain, and there was a dull throb in the back of her head that, although not life threatening, was incredibly uncomfortable to the point of eliciting a groan.

The ground was soft, and she could feel both the sun beating on the parts of her body not covered by a shade. She blearily opened her eyes and observed the thick trees with mild fascination. They reminded her of something, _somewhere_ , but she couldn't exactly remember what exactly. The lack of knowledge irked her, but at the same time she had other things to worry about at the moment.

She carefully got up, hoping not to make her injuries worse. She knew any normal person would have been rendered useless from such pain, but she managed to handle it just fine. Some would say mind over matter but... Yes, she had a high tolerance for pain because she was a medical kunoichi.

Ah, there it was. She was a kunoichi, sworn to defend...

She frowned. Her memories seemed to stop there, or at least that was all she could retrieve at the moment. Her name, though...

Her name was Sakura, though she couldn't quite remember her last name, even after she went through different words in her mind; none of them sounded familiar.

The kunoichi frowned momentarily, but then shrugged, or at least attempted to before the pain made her grimace. Well, it was nigh time to try to heal these injuries anyway.

She placed her hands over her ribs and let her subconscious lead her movements, since she didn't quite remember how to use medical ninjutsu to begin with. The familiar green light relaxed her and alleviated her body, but she panicked when the light faded almost immediately. Her body suddenly felt very heavy again, and she cursed herself for not realizing her chakra exhaustion first and foremost.

It's not that she didn't recognize it... More that she forgot how it felt...

* * *

The next time she woke up she was in a much softer place, possibly a bed. She felt the pressure of bandages in her ribs and ankle, the dull ache of her rather well-set shoulder, and the wetness of a cloth on her forehead. Sakura opened her eyes and wasn't surprised to see a wooden roof. The light seeping through the small window in her room gave the impression of mid-morning, maybe around nine, which meant that she had passed out for at least a day. That was a sound judgement considering her chakra reserves had improved from the day before.

She gingerly got up, making sure not to agitate her wounds any further. After double-checking her reserves to not make yesterday's blunder, she placed her hands over her ribs and felt the cooling of her chakra mending her broken bones. Whoever had healed her earlier had also changed her clothes. Gone was her comfortable ninja gear, instead replaced by an airy black skirt and a dull white shirt. After a couple of minutes the tightness in her chest dissipated completely and she could breathe easily once again. She wanted to carry on to finish the job with her shoulder and ankle, but she was still not in her full strength and didn't want to cause another chakra exhaustion.

Sakura sat at the edge of the bed and warily observed her surroundings. Her bed was at the far side of the room, with a night stand next to it with a lamp that seemed to burn on oil. Her whole room was made out of wood, which was slightly dangerous if her lamp really did burn oil. Other than the bed and nightstand, the room was devoid of any furniture.

Her sensitive ears heard a slow, light tread in the other side of the house. The house must've been small, because maybe even without her chakra-enhanced hearing she might've heard the footsteps of this home's inhabitant. The frailty behind the movement was obvious, which meant that if need be, Sakura could quickly eliminate the threat and be on her way. Though the ruthlessness behind her thoughts surprised a small part of her mind, a larger part of her psyche was more focused on keeping her alive.

She got up and made her way to the door, making sure to slowly push it open so as to not attract any attention. A small woman with gray hair was washing her dishes in the sink, though she got the water from a bucket. The sight shouldn't have surprised her, but for some reason she found it odd. There must've been an easier way to get water... right?

"Hello?"

The old woman dropped a dish and whirled around, staring at her with wide brown eyes. Her face was wrinkled and not well treated, and her yellow shirt and beige skirt were dull from use, just like her own clothes.

"I... I just wanted to thank you for helping me with my injuries. I could have died out there so for that... Is there something wrong?"

The woman just stared at her, and her mouth opened slightly in surprise.

Sakura looked around, trying to find the source of her astonishment, but she found none. She turned back to the woman and cleared her throat awkwardly. "Um, is there something in my face?"

The woman opened her mouth, and Sakura wanted to whimper when she heard what the woman said.

She didn't understand a single word.

* * *

_All that I knew was that my name was Sakura, and that I could heal and fight._

_I didn't know where I came from, whom I was supposed to protect, or where I was._

_The moment she spoke in a language I couldn't understand was the moment I truly broke._

_Because that was when I realized I was alone, and no one would recognize me._

* * *

The first week was a bit awkward for both Sakura and Helsa. Most of their communication resembled a crude game of charades, if they even managed to get their point across. What Sakura did manage to convey with growing proficiency was her hunger and thirst, which Helsa regarded with open amusement. Though she didn't understand where she was or how she got there, Sakura detested the idea of being a free loader and helped Helsa with whatever she could, especially the more physical chores.

They lived around thirty minutes from the nearest town, near the woods where Helsa had found an unconscious Sakura. Helsa had taken her there three days after her arrival, and although she couldn't understand a word that anyone said, Sakura knew she was asking around to see if anyone knew her. Sakura knew she was pretty unforgettable; her pink hair and bright green eyes made her almost impossible to not recognize.

However, Helsa's attempts were always met with a shake of the head.

It was in the first week that Sakura's depression set in. It was not that she missed anyone, because she realized that her amnesia had taken a new form and she couldn't remember absolutely anybody other than herself, and even that was a rather blurry. What caused her to sink in the depths of despair was her loneliness. Not only was she unable to communicate with anyone, but she quickly found out she was the only one with the ability to manipulate chakra, making her somewhat of an anomaly in this world. Even gentle Helsa became a bit wary the first time Sakura lifted a table with ease. Soon after that she quickly learned to gauge Helsa's strength and mimicked a slightly enhanced version of hers to appear more normal, but she knew Helsa wasn't going to forget.

So here she was, lonely and a freak. Maybe it was a small blessing to have amnesia, because she knew she wouldn't be able to cope with the homesickness.

However, what started as an uncomfortable relationship soon became a relaxing companionship in a matter of weeks. Sakura's worries of being kicked out of Helsa's home faded once she realized the old woman liked having her around, even if she wasn't that great of a conversation partner. Her fears were completely squashed when Helsa brought a notebook and pencil one day and beckoned Sakura to sit down on their small table. She drew pictures and wrote next to them in a foreign alphabet, sounding them out and pointing at her artwork.

Nouns were the easiest for her to learn, but verbs proved to be tricky. Helsa tried her best to draw them and explain what was going on, but Sakura was having problems conveying her sentences, and her attempts usually ended with sheepish smiles and toothless laughs.

"The girl run forest?" Sakura asked in broken German.

Helsa shook her head and said, "Wrong verb."

" _This is all so_ _frustrating_ ," Sakura muttered in her native tongue. Both women sat there, staring at the notebook as if it had the answers to their problems. And in hindsight, the notebook had been the answer to her problems before, but now they were starting to understand the limitations the notebook brought. There was no way Sakura could become proficient in a language with just that. 

The woman stood up and slid her chair back in. "Come... going to market." Though Sakura had problems conveying her thoughts, she was picking up on what Helsa said with ease, at least when she used simple verbs like "going to" and overused nouns like "market."

Sakura readied the basket meanwhile Helsa went for her money in her room. She had been curious as to what Helsa did for a living, considering she didn't have a husband or son that could work the fields. A couple of days after their meeting Sakura had seen her sewing her pants and long-sleeved shirt, and she realized that her savior had a knack for sewing. In fact, she later deduced that the worn clothes they had were her own creations, which were quiet popular in Beinn, the town they frequented.

The walk there was peaceful, as it always was. Sakura found trees to be strangely relaxing and familiar, though the reason was a mystery considering her memories were inaccessible. She had tried to communicate that to Helsa to see if she had any recommendations, but she didn't know how to _show_ amnesia. She settled for saying "forgot my life," which elicited a sad look from Helsa, a reply she couldn't understand, and a quiet dinner.

Sakura hadn't brought the topic again.

Beinn's commercial district was bustling with activity, with horses moving carts filled with goods and people bartering for food and produce in stalls on the streets. Even though people already knew of Sakura's existence, she still managed to turn a few heads towards her, and it always made her blush under the pressure of the stares.

They approached a stall that sold Sakura's favorite potatoes, but instead of the usual blond seller, there was a woman with long black hair and happy dark eyes. Helsa seemed rather content about this, because they started chatting animatedly to the point that Sakura easily lost track of the conversation. She knew that the topic was about their lives, at least until Helsa said her name.

"...Sakura––"

"Sakura?" the black haired woman repeated, confused.

Helsa nodded and started explaining their meeting, if the words "forest," "hurt," and "living" were of any indication. The black haired woman was very interested in her, though, to the point that Sakura became uncomfortable and started browsing the potatoes to see which ones they would take.

" _Do you understand what I am saying?"_ the woman asked in Japanese.

Sakura whipped her head up and stared at her with wide eyes. Yes, there was a very noticeable accent, but her sentence structure and delivery were almost flawless. " _I do... How do you know what I am_ _saying?"_

Her answer seemed to please her greatly, because she smiled widely, showing her slightly yellow teeth. " _My grandparents came from a land far away where they spoke this language, however it seems I am the last one that does. Your name is very beautiful, Sakura-san; even though I never saw them, that was all my grandmother ever talked about."_

She bowed slightly in respect and acceptance of her compliment. " _Thank you very much... Well, this is rude of me, but what is your name?"_

The woman blinked and laughed nervously. " _Oh, if my grandmother heard me she would be very disappointed of me. My name is Mikoto Ackerman, though I guess you would say it Ackerman Mikoto."_

_"It is a pleasure to meet you, Ackerman-san."_

Mikoto turned to talk to Helsa for a couple of minutes. Since Sakura couldn't quite follow the conversation very well, she settled for observing her expressions. The Japanese woman was visibly ecstatic, but there was a wariness behind Helsa's eyes that disappeared the more Mikoto talked. Eventually Helsa agreed to whatever Mikoto was proposing, which made her grin in happiness.

" _Ah, Sakura-san, what would you say if you came to my house every day to learn our language? Helsa tells me that she reached the end of what she can teach you, but there is still much for you to learn."_

The pink-haired girl blinked in wonder, but then she smiled widely and nodded enthusiastically to both Mikoto and Helsa. " _That would be wonderful! I would love to be able to have a conversation with Helsa without trying to guess what we're saying."_

Mikoto laughed and translated what Sakura said for Helsa to enjoy. She grinned, showing her lack of teeth, and nodded along with her statement. Sakura couldn't help but feel a bout of warmth for the woman right then, considering that she knew her hesitance was not for her fear of Sakura being distracted, but of trusting someone else with the well-being of her housemate.

However, Sakura knew that somewhere in Helsa's mind she was remembering her freakish strength and that must've assuaged her doubts.

* * *

_Even though I didn't have precious people to protect, I could see myself wanting to protect Helsa, the woman who nursed and trusted a stranger with the remnants of her youth._

* * *

_Six Months Later_

_October 8th, 842_

"Mikasa, can you bring the plates please?"

Sakura saw her trip before she started falling and quickly took the plates and righted the younger girl with her other hand. Mikasa stared at her with wide gray eyes, astonished at her ability and swiftness, but Sakura just winked at her and placed an index finger in front of her mouth playfully. The girl nodded gravely and mimicked her gesture, the action so somber that it made her giggle.

" _What are you two up to?"_ Mikoto asked, her voice light and amused.

" _Nothing,"_ they replied in unison and giggled together.

"Help, Ackerman-san?" Sakura asked, eyeing the heavy laundry in Mikoto's arms. Though her speech was still heavily-accented, she could now quickly form sentences in her head with simple verbs, something Mikoto was pleasantly impressed about, considering her limited training. Sakura deduced she must've been someone smart prior to losing her memory, something that made her chest swell with pride.

"Oh, no, don't worry, Sakura. I heard that Erick needed help in the fields. Help there?"

Sakura agreed wordlessly, quickly heading out to their fields and spotting Mr. Ackerman working with his prized potatoes. Though Sakura had kept her powers as a kunoichi hidden for the sake of fitting in, both the Ackermans and Helsa knew about her freakish strength, and they didn't hesitate to request her help. She didn't mind, though; the times were rough and they could use every able-bodied person at their disposal. In fact, it made Sakura happy to know she could be of any use to them.

Erick Ackerman had started out as a very quiet, reserved man, but he had soon warmed to his wife's pupil and showed his kind, happy personality that he only seemed to have around Mikasa and Mikoto. He had showed her how to plough a field as well as check the overall health of the crops, which was quite the feat considering the lack of available communication.

Both of them lost track of time, too engrossed in their work, and only realized the sun would soon set when Mikoto calmed them back. Sakura wiped her brow and walked inside, already thinking about the excuse she would have to give Helsa for her tardiness. Though she had only been with her for half a year, Helsa considered Sakura like a granddaughter and protected her as such. She had confided to her that she had lost both her husband and son to the titans, tall humanoid creatures that inhabited this world and preyed on humans. It had apparently been an accident, because they belonged to the military division that was less involved in combat, the Garrison, but it had happened and so here she was, a widow and childless.

The worst part was that she was barely forty but she looked old enough to be a grandmother.

"Oh, Sakura, are you going to have dinner?"

She shook her head and chuckled nervously. "Helsa must be mad. I am... ah... after hour? _Late?_ "

"Late," Mikoto supplied gently.

"Yes, I am late."

Mikasa placed two plates on opposing chairs and Erick soon followed, placing another pair. They all looked at each other and grinned at Sakura. "Well, there's four plates set, so I guess it would be a shame to waste so much food, right?" Erick, though kind, was quite sneaky and knew how to get what he wanted.

Sakura sighed but she didn't restrain the smile that blossomed in her face. She had been a bit nervous about the possibility that she would never get her memories back, but being surrounded by such wonderful people eased those worries and she soon realized that she didn't miss those memories, because she had Helsa and Mikoto and Mikasa and Erick to make new memories with.

Dinner was particularly eventful as Mikasa related her encounter with the laws of nature right on her gardens. The strong dominated the weak... It was both an inter and intra-species law, applied mercilessly and almost without fail. That Mikasa had noticed it at such early age was testament of her heightened perception and intelligence.

She would make a suitable pupil when she grew a bit older. Perhaps Mikoto or Erick would let her teach Mikasa a bit of taijutsu later on? Well, first she had to go over the movements herself, of course. Even though she innately remembered what she was supposed to do, just like breathing, Sakura didn't think she was ready to pass on the knowledge just yet.

After cleaning the dirty dishes, Sakura bid the family farewell. The sky was already dark, and she knew Helsa would probably chastise her a little tonight, but Sakura was feeling happy and satisfied with the turn her life had taken so she was more than ready to take whatever punishment Helsa deemed necessary.

Sakura looked around and, after making sure there was no one in the vicinity, walked on the trees by coating the bottom of her feet with chakra. Soon she was jumping effortlessly from tree to tree, barely making the branches tilt under her weight. If someone was around to see it, he would've thought she was flying. This exercise was something Sakura could seldom do, considering that it had to be night and she had to be alone for her to do it, since nobody seemed able to use chakra or was even aware that jumping such long distances was possible. Sakura had even questioned Mikoto about the uses of chakra in her history and she had only given her a blank stare before asking what chakra was.

There was a very high possibility that she was the only one able to use chakra in this world, which meant that either her people were secretive and reclusive or... less likely, she wasn't from this world. But that was impossible, right? How would that be even possible after all? Out of the two choices, it was much more likely and preferable if her people, the shinobi and kunoichi, were secretive like their profession. After all, that's what they were supposed to be and do. What kind of shinobi would–

Sakura skidded to a stop when she saw smoke rising from the woods in the general direction her home was. She sped up, her body almost a mirage as she ran faster than she had ever run before. The apprehension and anxiousness in her gut worsened when she saw the eager fire rising, rolling in the rooftops of their home by the wind. She immediately barged in their small wooden house, quickly locating Helsa because she was the only chakra signature in the house, however frail and fleeting.

She crouched in front of Helsa and gathered her in her arms, lifting her as if she were weightless. "Sakura...?" Helsa murmured, before coughing harshly, throwing specks of blood in Sakura's face. With growing horror she stared at the blood dripping from Helsa's stomach, coating her fingers in red.

As much as the curiosity was killing her, she needed to get out of the burning house before they caught on fire or asphyxiated. However, there was no way any normal human could logically flee the house, so Sakura had to throw all caution to the wind and use her power as a kunoichi to get them both out of there alive. With her chakra-enhanced eyesight she picked the areas were the fire was the weakest and jumped over them. Sakura could've sworn she should've burned her legs, but instead felt the fire caress her. That was something she would have to think about later on.

Once she was far away enough of the fire, she gently set Helsa down on the grass floor. Even though she wanted to heal her as fast as she could, she needed to find a way to put the fire down before it spread to the forest and burned everything in its path. But how exactly could she do that? The only things she remembered were those innate to her person, like her chakra-enhanced strength, agility, and senses. Then again, she could do medical ninjutsu, so maybe she could to other kinds of ninjutsu?

The wind was carrying sparks of the fire further and further. The sight would've been devastatingly beautiful had Sakura not been so emotionally involved with the burning of her first home. She didn't even notice her hands making the seals until she muttered, " ** _Suiton: Bakusui Shoha,_** _"_ and her mouth released a wave of water that crashed down on their home and quickly overwhelmed the flames, the steam rising into the dark night, covering some of the stars momentarily.

Even though it had felt natural to use that ninjutsu, the amount of chakra it consumed left her winded and exhausted. She was sure out of shape to be rendered so useless after just one jutsu, which meant that she should invest in training both her mind and body more often after this.

Once she was sure the fire was fully extinguished, Sakura headed back towards Helsa with a powerful jump. She landed roughly beside her, but she was too preoccupied trying to stop the bleeding to mind that much.

"Fine," she choked. "You'll be fine, Helsa. _I promise you'll be okay, I'll promise I'll save you. I promise I won't lose you."_

Helsa placed a gentle hand above her hands after noticing the healing light was flickering out of existence. "It is okay, Sakura. I am old, and there are people I want to see on the other side... Thank you for making the last months of my life... Ah, you don't know that word. I guess happy will suffice. You are full of surprises."

"Who did this?" she asked, her voice mixed with sobs and rage as she stopped the healing ninjutsu before she became exhausted.

Helsa shook her head sadly and squeezed her fingers. "They are gone, but they don't matter, dear Sakura. Love is better motivation than hate and revenge... Remember that, because when I did it was far too late."

"I'm so sorry," Sakura muttered, holding back another cry. " _If I hadn't stopped training, if I had come home earlier, if I weren't so weak..."_ Sakura stared at Helsa's unseeing eyes, knowing that she hadn't heard a word of her apology. "... _You would be alive."_

Sakura retrieved her hands from her abdomen and stared from her bloodied hands back to the open wound in her stomach, which was still bleeding freely. Someone had broken into _their_ home and attacked her precious person. Though she had no idea why anyone would prey on an old woman like Helsa, the end result was still the same.

She gingerly closed Helsa's eyes and laid her down into the ground.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to her corpse.

But this time she didn't mean it.

* * *

She waited for half an hour besides her body, allowing her hot rage to morph into cold bloodlust. Once she was ready, she picked Helsa's body up and ran to the ashes of their house, placing her gently there until she found a suitable burial spot.

Right now, though, she needed to find the people that took away her precious person.

Sakura didn't have much experience with tracking, and the only experience she had been counting on was the one she had forgotten. However, she was determined to not rest until she found them. Even though she had given them a thirty minute head start, she could cover that distance in less than ten minutes, so she had the advantage there.

The trick was locating their chakra, and locating chakra in the middle of a forest usually devoid of people at this time shouldn't be too hard.

And indeed, it hadn't been hard, at all. After fifteen minutes of aimlessly jumping from branch to branch she felt four chakra signatures walking leisurely away from her location, around five minutes away. She headed that way and quickly caught up to them. Once she was in their hearing range, she muffled her footsteps with chakra and came close enough to hear their conversation. She had to make sure they were the murderers, but she also wanted to know why they set their house on fire and stabbed Helsa.

"... did we get?"

"Hn, almost nothing. Bitch was empty."

Her jaw clenched, and she held back her punch.

"That was not the point," a new voice pitched in. "Fear... We want the farmlands to fear us."

"Word... people will know. Then we get money. Then... rich."

Sakura cursed her inability to speak more fluently, but by now she had a rough idea of what they were trying to say. Helsa had been the first (or at least she thought she was the first) of a series of attacks preying on the people far away from congregated human settlements. Despicable actions which led to extortion, but to get there they needed to build a reputation, and the only way to become infamous was by causing more crimes like the ones that happened today.

That was all she needed to hear.

She readied her fist with chakra and leapt down from her tree branch to land silently besides the outermost male of the band. Without leaving them a chance to notice her, she punched him squarely in the jaw, the power behind her fist so great that she ripped his head out of his neck and sent it flying to a nearby trunk. Blood sprayed from his neck, streams of blood dirtying her face and hair and the new white shirt Helsa had gifted her two days ago.

The thugs jumped and yelled in surprise, but Sakura didn't give them time to recover as she uppercutted the next man, sending his head flying to the treetops. By now Sakura was starting to enjoy the noise of cracking bones and ripped skin, and looked forward to hearing what sounds the other two murderers would make.

The other two were prepared, if the glint of their knives in the moonlight was of any indication. However, they were at a disadvantage since Sakura could see much better than them and she had superior reflexes. Both of them charged at her at the same time, but Sakura quickly jumped out of the way, getting behind them and punching them in the chest at the same time, feeling giddy when she heard their spinal cords snapping beneath her fists. They crumpled to the floor like puppets being cut from their strings.

In the midst of her adrenaline rush Sakura had not realized how heavily she was breathing. Whatever chakra she had recovered in the last thirty minutes was gone. If there had been another shinobi around she would've been dead already. Had she been a pitiful excuse of a kunoichi in her homeland?

She started becoming more aware of the blood on her face and clothes and started cleaning her face with her stained hands, though she was surprised when she felt something cooler making its way down her cheeks.

Huh, so she had been crying all this time.

What a pitiful excuse of a kunoichi she really was.

* * *

Mikoto was the first one to hear the soft knocks on the door. She turned around to look at her husband, who was peacefully asleep after a day of tolling in the fields. Harvest day was getting closer, so she knew Erick always gave it a little bit more these days. With that thought in mind, she made her way to open the door to give Erick some more time, noting as she passed the kitchen that it was barely sunrise.

She closed her eyes in annoyance and opened the door. "I hope you know..." She gaped at Sakura, who was drenched in blood and staring at her with empty bloodshot eyes.

"I... I... _I didn't know where else to go,"_ she whispered.

She sounded so pitiful, so alone, so broken, that Mikoto decided to forget she was drenched in _blood_ and gave her a bone-crushing hug. She stroked her hair, which was more red than pink right now, as she sobbed into her shoulder.

"I promise I... _I gave her a good burial."_

" _Shh, shh, I know you did, I know you did. I know you honored your grandmother."_

Sakura only cried harder.

* * *

_It was then that I realized that even people without a past can feel pain._

_It was then that I realized that a kunoichi could lose to death._

_It left a bitter taste in my mouth._

_A taste I would experience many more times later on._


	2. Resolve

Dinner that night was a tense and quiet affair. Sakura had explained a very edited version of the events, saying that Helsa had accidentally dropped her lamp, consequently setting the whole house on fire in a matter of seconds. Sakura got there just in time to retrieve her from the building, but she had sustained a heavy injury from a fallen piece of wood that had impaled her abdomen, killing her a few minutes later from blood loss.

She had gone through great lengths to hide the bodies of the bandits, looking for any missing appendages and then burying all of their remains very deep in the earth. She knew no one was going to miss them, considering they were relatively unknown and the only one that knew about their crime had assassinated them not even an hour later, but she still had to make sure nobody would accidentally come across their corpses, especially the decapitated ones. That would just raise unnecessary questions.

It had been a good thing that the Ackermans trusted Sakura's word. It's not that she feared their retribution, because she was sure they would say the thugs deserved what they got in a twisted way. No, she feared _their_ fear. She didn't want visit their house and have them be on the edge, wandering if she was going to snap at them if they so much as playfully insulted her. She didn't want them to think of her as a cold-blooded murderer no better than the ones she had killed. She had snapped, yes, but that was because of grief and rage, not because she was a psychopath who relished in going on killing sprees.

Or had she been like that? Is that why she had found it so easy to end someone else's life, because she had done it before and felt no remorse?

The Ackermans were the only people capable of accepting her in her current state, so if she had to hide a part of her to be accepted then so be it.

Mikasa had been understandably quiet throughout the whole dinner. Though the kunoichi felt numb inside, she was still perceptive enough to notice Mikasa's determined gaze whenever they locked stares.

"Mom, can Sakura stay here, with us?"

Sakura was about to swallow her stew when she choked, coughing harshly from the surprise. Mikoto patted her on the back gently, and after a couple of gulps of water she regained her composure, much to her embarrassment.

"Now, Mikasa––" Mikoto started off gently.

However, the seven-year-old was not easily dissuaded. "She can stay in my room. She can have my bed and I can sleep in the floor, too."

"Mikasa," Sakura murmured gently, "you don't have to do that. It's okay. I can––"

"It's a big responsibility to have a roomate," Erick interrupted with an amused smile. He patted his daughter on the head. "Think you can handle it?"

Mikasa nodded eagerly, puffing out her cheeks. "I'll do it for Sakura!"

Sakura put her spoon down next to her bowl and stared helplessly at each of them, feeling her dread grow at their looks of compassion. "I... I don't know how to say––"

"Then don't." Mikoto's eyes hardened a bit and she placed her hand on top of Sakura's squeezing gently. " _I don't know what image you have of yourself, but you have been a wonderful addition to our family. It would be our greatest honor if you accepted a place in the Ackerman household._ Will you, Sakura?"

She grit her teeth and closed her eyes tightly, hoping to keep the tears at bay. Here she was, a monster, and the Ackermans were inviting her to live like one of them. She should have refused, she should have been selfless and thought about their well-being above her own, but she was selfish and, although the guilt was eating her alive, she felt elated that the Ackermans thought of her as family.

" _I humbly accept."_

Dinner that night became a relaxed and somber affair.

"Oh, Mikasa, don't worry: we'll get you a new bed."

* * *

_December 25, 842_

" _Um, Mikasa, do you need any help with that_?"

The dark-haired girl stared at her surrogate sister, slightly confused. "What do you mean?"

Sakura pointed at the logs she was carrying with a tip of her head. True, Sakura was carrying five times the amount, but she had the strength of ten men. She couldn't hide her freakish strength from the Ackermans, anyway. Mikasa, however, was a seven-year-old who was carrying ten pounds worth of wood in her arms and she didn't even bat an eyelash.

" _They're not heavy?"_

"No." She lifted the logs a bit higher, as if to prove a point. "Mom says I have to be strong so I am."

" _How strong do you want to be?"_

"Is that Japanese I'm hearing from you, Sakura? And why aren't you practicing your Japanese, Mikasa?"

Sakura cringed and hesitated to look ahead, knowing that Mikoto would be glaring quite openly at her. The pair of adopted sisters had an unspoken agreement to speak in the language they felt most comfortable in whenever Mikoto was out of an earshot. She had stressed to Sakura the importance of continuously practicing the language, but she had grown complacent with speaking Japanese to the younger girl, especially because Mikasa understood everything she said with ease. And Mikasa felt no interest in keeping her ancestor's tongue alive, seeing as it would be useless in a few years.

"Um... Sorry?"

Mikoto wasn't placated, though. She whacked both of them in the back of the head, making Mikasa yelp in pain and Sakura whimper in surprise.

"I expected a better excuse from you, Sakura Ackerman. Now, hurry along; those logs need to last us a couple of days and tonight."

Both girls shifted the logs slightly in their hands, the gloves protecting them from the splinters of the wood.

It had been awkward the first time the Ackermans had acknowledged her as part of the family by attaching their last name to hers. Erick had done it first, and the room had become so quiet and uncomfortable that none of them had brought it up for two weeks. The underlying tension of acceptance had immediately vanished once she introduced herself as Sakura Ackerman to one of Erick's potential costumers, unknowingly causing him to grin in happiness.

Ever since then the name had just... fit.

" _I don't want to be strong,"_ she whispered in response to her last question. " _I don't want to fight. I... don't want to hurt anyone."_

Sakura smiled sadly and opened the door for both of them, balancing the majority of the logs with one arm. Once inside they put the wood next to the fireplace, though Sakura stayed behind to make a new fire.

"You don't hurt people with your strength. You protect them."

"Protect?"

The fire flickered to life after a few attempts to make sparks. The room immediately felt ten degrees warmer, which was still not enough to make her feel comfortable with the weather. Apparently this winter was better than the last two years', but she still couldn't stop shivering for more than three minutes.

"Mhm," she hummed in agreement. "But you don't have to worry right now. It's something that you'll, uh... _You'll figure it out when you're older."_ She pivoted on her heels and hit the firewood, causing their little stack to fall down. "Ugh, why do we even have so many?"

"Today is the Winter Feast, so Mom and Dad want a big fire to last through the night."

" _Ah, yeah, the Winter Feast."_ She repeated the name, trying to sound it out so that her accent would eventually fade. " _What is this Winter Feast anyway? Everyone talks about it but I don't really know what's going on."_

"You don't know what the Winter Feast is?" Mikasa asked, both dismayed and fascinated at the piece of information.

Sakura frowned at her tone but shook her head. It wasn't like she was missing something big, right? " _I don't remember anything, remember?"_

"Oh, sorry... I forgot. Anyway, Winter Feast is when you give presents to the people you love because it makes them happy. Oh, and you eat a big dinner too! I think the big dinner is the main reason but I like the presents."

"Why?"

Mikasa's excited face disappeared, replaced by a thoughtful frown. "Huh... I don't know. Maybe Mom knows?"

Erick opened the door, letting the chilly winter air in for a second too long. He seemed extremely proud and content, if his grin and sparkling eyes were anything to go by. He placed a package on the tabletop and unwrapped it for the girls to see.

"Mikasa, go get your mother and tell her we have a goose."

The girl bolted out in a second, yelling at the top of her lungs that they were going to have meat for Christmas. If Sakura hadn't been so astonished to begin with, she would've laughed at her antics.

"Do you know how to cook goose?"

She smiled sheepishly and shook her head. "Not too late, right?"

Erick chuckled, and Sakura had to admit his happiness was incredibly contagious. "No, it's never too late to learn how to cook goose."

Mikasa dragged Mikoto back home, only for her to wrap her arms around her husband's neck and kiss him soundly on the lips. Both girls scrunched their noses at the same time, looked at each other in disgust, and then giggled when they saw they had the exact same expression on their faces.

The rest of the evening was spent preparing dinner. They were going to have the best potatoes Erick had harvested along with some lettuce Mikoto received earlier from a friend of hers. To top it off, they were going to have their _own_ piece of goose, no need to share or save it to make it last.

What Sakura figured about the Winter Feast was that it was a day to be happy because her tummy was going to be full.

Once the table had been set, they each said something they were grateful for this year. All of the Ackermans' responses had something to do with being introduced to Sakura, which made her feel warmth on her cheeks and in her heart, and she made everyone blush in retaliation as she expressed just how grateful she was with them for taking her in as their own.

"For a wonderful year!" Mikasa cheered, and the rest of the family echoed her.

Sakura thought that they would be too occupied in eating to have an ongoing conversation, but to her pleasant surprise they couldn't stop talking or laughing about the silliest of things, and the fact that they could be so entertained about something so simple made her heart clench even tighter in what she suspected was joy. It almost felt as if she was regaining that relationship she lost with Helsa.

Helsa... The name still made her unbearably sad, but having the Ackermans around made her much stronger than before.

"Presents!" Mikasa exclaimed when Erick returned from their room. In one hand he had a doll, which he gave to an unstoppable Mikasa, and in the other hand he had a piece of rolled paper, which he gave to Mikoto. Sakura had to admit that the moment she didn't receive a present, a brief flash of hurt passed through her mind, but she quickly squashed it; they had accepted her into their family and she was feeling petty that they didn't give her a Winter Feast present?

What a wimp.

"Sakura."

She blinked in surprise and turned towards Mikoto, who was now standing next to her.

"I never saw them... But my grandmother always described them in her stories so I tried remembering every single detail and made this for you. Merry Christmas."

She took the paper and gently unrolled it, feeling her chest become heavy and her eyes water when she saw the most beautiful cherry blossom drawing she had ever seen. She didn't –– _couldn't_ –– remember ever seeing one, but a deep part of her mind recognized it and she knew it was beautiful. Even though the drawing was done completely in black ink, she couldn't help but appreciate the art style that reminded her so much of a home she didn't have memories of.

" _This is the most beautiful thing I have seen in my life_ ," Sakura murmured appreciatively, running her fingers down the kanji lines. She looked up to survey the family, unsurprised to see the tenderness in their faces. "Thank you so much."

Whatever Mikoto was about to say was interrupted by an unrelenting Mikasa, who begged Sakura to play with her dolls. She had to excuse herself from the dinner, much to Erick and Mikoto's amusement. Sakura thought that the younger girl had a burst of energy, but ten minutes later she was peacefully asleep in her arms, clutching the doll that suspiciously looked like Sakura, sans pink hair, close to her chest.

Any other day Sakura would have placed Mikasa in her own bed, but today the night was cold, and maybe she wanted to share the warmth the Winter Feast brought her.

* * *

_February 10, 843_

Beinn was bustling with a bit more liveliness than usual. They were safe within the walls, the safe people spent more money, merchants earned more money and spent it on other things... Overall, the economy was good, and it was particularly good for Erick's produce stall, which had earned quite the reputation that extended almost thirty kilometers, well over two towns.

Sometimes people even sought them at their home, hoping to buy any leftover vegetables, even if it meant paying more for it.

Erick had quickly noticed that Sakura had a knack for selling. To begin with, she was very pretty and had exotic looks, which always attracted the attention of the crowd, especially travelers. After that she baited the prey –– _ahem,_ customer–– her gentle voice and bright green eyes forced them to look for something to buy, whether it was to linger in the stall or to appease the girl. It certainly helped that her accent was endearing, which made people want to talk to her even more, which in turn built a strong loyalty. To top it off, whenever she encountered cunning customers, Sakura would put them in place with a no-nonsense face and snappy voice that even scared Erick himself.

He had once sheepishly admitted to her that he brought her as often as he did to Beinn because he always seemed to make more money whenever she was present. He had feared she would be hurt about his confession, but she only laughed, saying that she was more than happy to do anything that would make the stall more successful and even asking in a sly voice what they could do to earn more money.

To say he was proud was an understatement.

"Thank you for your purchase!" She handed over the paper bag containing around two pounds of barley, her biggest sale of the day for now.

The woman took the bag gently and grinned widely at her. "It's so nice having you around, Sakura. It was about time that father of yours admitted that you're better than him and let you come every day."

Erick wanted to glare at the woman, but he knew that she had just paid them handsomely so he only chuckled and patted Sakura on the head. "Oh, please, Mrs Berdine, she learned it from me."

Sakura playfully shooed his hand from her head and shot him a mock glare. "Yeah, right. Thank you for seeing the truth!"

Berdine chuckled and left with a wave, leaving the duo standing there in the chilly cold under the warmth of the sun. Sakura took a seat behind the stall and next to their cart, and noted with satisfaction that there was a big dent there. Maybe they would finish earlier than usual, even.

"So, what are we getting Mikasa?"

"You mean, what are _**you**_ getting for Mikasa?"

" _What?"_

"That means where, right?"

Sakura blushed. "Ah, no, it means what. But why me?"

"Well, Mikoto and I always take turns getting Mikasa's present, but I think she would appreciate it if you gave it to her."

The kunoichi bit the inside of her cheek, deep in thought. It made sense to give her the task of choosing Mikasa's present. She hadn't seen her the whole day, since Erick always woke her up before sunrise to get to Beinn early, but she knew she would be expecting her present.

"Okay, I think I can do it."

Erick chuckled and patted her twice on the back. "Good! Now, leave the stall to me and go find a present for her. Here's the money."

He gave her a small bag which weighed little, but she knew that the amount of gold inside was more than what they usually spent on a single thing. Sakura stood up from her seat, removing the imaginary dust from her long yellow skirt, and left Erick to his own devices.

Even though there was a wealth of options, the street felt _empty_. Finding Mikasa a present should've been easy ––the girl was a doll maniac after all–– but for some reason she couldn't come up with a suitable idea. She wasn't going to give her another doll because she already had five. A book would be a boring present, and she was sure she wouldn't appreciate clothes because Mikasa wouldn't be able to play with them.

Her mind was quickly coming up with different birthday present ideas and almost discarding them immediately, but she still was aware enough to turn her attention to something that caught her eye. It was a beautiful wooden doll house, with three rows and three columns of rooms, and the roof was a sight to behold, with expertly painted lines and colors. The house was devoid of furniture, but Sakura could make her different pieces as time went by.

She entered the store and immediately went to the person behind the counter. He was an older man with kind blue eyes and a thick mustache. Perhaps Sakura would be able to manipulate him into giving her a discount? She wasn't sure the ten gold coins she had with her would suffice to buy that beautiful house.

"Excuse me, sir, how much for the house?" Her voice was polite and warm, the one she had perfected with months of experience, and she pointed with a graceful finger at the house displayed in the window.

"Ah, for you, my dear Sakura, I am willing to sell it for twenty!"

Sakura internally cringed. There was no way she was going to be able to lower the price by ten coins. She looked around the store, trying to find any other woodwork that was pretty enough but much cheaper. "Um, is there something in the ten range?"

The man gave a thoughtful frown and eyed his store.

She almost smacked her head when she remembered she had fifteen gold coins she had saved up because she wanted to buy a new blouse. Well, she could always buy clothes another day, but Mikasa's birthday was today until the next year. "Oh, sorry, I do have the money. Here."

"Eighteen would be fine," the man said in a kindly voice.

Sakura beamed in pleasure and handed over the rest of the money, feeling proud with her purchase. She promised him the best potatoes from the next harvest, to which he only laughed and said he was looking forward to them. The store owner offered to help her carry the house, but Sakura denied his offer with a secretive smile.

She decided to take a shortcut, since the sun would soon start to set and Erick hated pulling their cart at night, saying that rocks were much harder to spot without light. Besides, even though the house weighed virtually nothing compared to what she could carry, it still felt a bit awkward carrying it around the streets.

The kunoichi skidded to a stop when she passed by the blacksmith. Even though people preferred shotguns and gunpowder to kill each other, those were weapons only the military and rich could afford. The rest of the populace relied on steel and arrows to protect themselves. Erick had a shotgun, but he seldom used it, claiming that he couldn't load it quickly enough.

She still remembered the conversation they had during the Winter Feast, where she asked Mikasa why she was strong. If she gave her a means to protect herself and others, would she agree in training herself?

"What are you doing here?"

Sakura blinked, surprised to find herself inside the forge, because was this place _loud_. She had to admit she wouldn't mind working there in the cold months of winter, but it must be a bitch to be there hammering steel in the middle of summer. "I'm looking for a dagger."

The bald man grunted and pointed at the rows of daggers with a disinterested wave. Sakura held back a huff of annoyance and made her way to the daggers. She gingerly placed the house down, careful to not get any scratches or dirt on it, and eyed the weapons. Most of them were beautiful and well-made, but she only had seven gold coins to spend, which meant she had to go for the cheaper looking ones. Not that it really mattered, since this was Mikasa's first weapon and people usually received shitty first things.

She picked a simple dagger from a cluttered mess and unsheathed it. The steel was dull, but the edges were sharp enough to make her bleed slightly when she ran a fingertip along the edge.

"How much for this one?"

The blacksmith stopped hammering, and Sakura sighed softly in relief; that noise was making her head throb. "Five," he answered quickly and turned to go back to work.

Sakura frowned. That was a bit overpriced considering this was probably a failed dagger he hadn't even considered to sell. "The steel is not very pure, the edges are not that smooth, and the hilt could have been better. I'll give you three."

He grunted in annoyance but nodded slightly, accepting her terms. She smirked to herself in satisfaction, handed him the money, gathered her purchases, and left the small, loud forge without a parting glance.

Now the sun had really began to set, so she shouldn't have been surprised to meet an agitated Erick.

"Where were you all this time?"

"Buying Mikasa's present."

"It's late."

"I bought her a doll house and a dagger."

Erick stopped walking immediately, and the cart he carried on his back came to a full stop.

"Hm, maybe we should buy a horse to carry this one day," she thought out loud.

"You bought her a what?"

Sakura squirmed, a bit uncomfortable to hear such an edgy voice from Erick. "She's eight now, and the world is... is cruel. She should learn how to fight early to protect herself."

"And you know how to fight?" he asked, a suspicious and unbelieving but at least he didn't seem to oppose the idea so much.

"Of course."

"When did you learn?"

She frowned. "I don't know. I just woke up that day and knew how to fight, knew how to move."

"Oh," Erick exhaled softly. It was no secret that Sakura was a bit sensitive about her amnesia. It was something that frustrated endlessly, knowing things but not knowing _how_ she knew them, and the Ackermans knew that they should leave the topic be lest they add unnecessary grief to the girl.

The topic of her hair was open, though. It wasn't a normal week unless someone made a joke at the expense of her pink hair, much to her annoyance. Still, she must like her hair, because she had not cut it once and it now reached her mid-back.

"Do I have your permission?"

"Only if Mikasa agrees."

The rest of their walk home was silent except when Erick whispered a curse after bumping into a small rock. Sakura was just anxious to give her gifts to Mikasa, knowing she would appreciate them immensely.

Their small house came into view and both of them unconsciously sped up, eager to get back home. They must've been loud, because the door opened and Mikasa bolted right at them, laughing and asking about their day and telling them how great hers was in one big sentence.

"Whoa, Mikasa, slow down," Sakura said with a chuckle. She crouched –– she was not so small anymore and her head towered over her–– and handed the doll house to her, inwardly relieved that she had enough sense to hide the dagger in her right hip. "Happy Birthday, Mikasa."

The girl stared at the wooden house with such reverence that it almost made Sakura laugh, _almost_. She took her gift somberly and clutched it to her chest. "This is amazing. Thank you, Sakura! Thank you, Papa!" She whirled around, running inside the house and yelling her thanks to her mother.

"By the way, how much did that house cost?"

"Ten," she replied without missing a beat.

* * *

_June 20, 843_

Mikasa aimed a punch at her right shoulder, but Sakura quickly side-stepped to the left to avoid being hit. She then made a low kick, and Sakura was about to simply jump, but she noticed the muscles in her left arm preparing to throw a punch, so she did a backflip and regained her balance almost immediately, putting herself out of harm's way without breaking a sweat.

Her pupil, on the other hand, was huffing and greedily gulping any air she could take. With a groan, she dropped down to the grass floor, exhausted.

"Why won't you... let me hit you?" she asked in between pants.

Sakura took a seat besides her, tucking a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. She really needed to make better ponytails. "Because I don't want to get hurt. Besides, the day you hit me is the day this is over, remember?"

"You made it sound so easy when you first offered this."

She grinned, recalling the look of smugness in Mikasa's face the first day of their lesson. Sakura had declared that the only thing Mikasa needed to do was land one hit, _one_ , and the training would be over. She dodged her punches with ease and pointed out problems in her stance, counting the number of times she would be dead if this were a real fight.

The count had never come below thirty.

"I know, but you'll get it, eventually. Maybe in a couple of years seeing how good you are."

" _Years_? I'll be like, ten or twelve or thirteen! I don't––" Her rant came to a stop, and her frustrated face was replaced by a thoughtful frown. "When's your birthday?"

Sakura smiled sadly. "I don't remember."

Mikasa stood up and crossed her arms. "That's no good. If you don't have a birthday, you can't receive presents, right?"

"No," she replied slowly, unsure as to where her train of thought was going.

"Then today is your birthday, and you are... Hm, you're old, so you're seventeen starting today."

"Why today? And why seventeen?"

"Why not today? And what's wrong with being seventeen?"

Sakura puffed her cheeks out. "There's nothing wrong with them," she eventually said. "It's just a bit sudden... I never really cared about those things."

"Well, I do. So today, June 20, is your birthday. Happy Birthday, Sakura!"

She had half a mind to protest, but looking down at her excited gray orbs she couldn't help but give in to this little girl who, though sometimes bossy, was only looking out for her, even if she was about a decade older than her.

"Thank you, Mikasa. This will be the best––"

"Mikasa! Sakura! Come back! Doctor Jaeger is here to check on you two!"

The black-haired girl groaned and sat up, a lethargic look on her face. Sakura chuckled and stood up, offering her a helping hand, which she gladly took.

She thought Mikasa was going to challenge her to a race back home, but she did no such thing. She must be in no hurry to go back, considering the doctor was here for their yearly check up. She said that Doctor Jaeger did weird things, like putting a thing above her heart and listening in, checking her ears and mouth, asking if she felt something funny in her stomach, and she never liked it.

Sakura knew that he was just following a strict diagnosis protocol, something that she felt she had done countless of times, even though she didn't quite remember what. Maybe this Doctor Jaeger would serve to clear up a bit of her memory?

They entered their home with opposite expressions, but Mikasa's look of irritation quickly downspiraled into a grimace once she spotted the tools the doctor brought with him.

"Doctor Jaeger said the checkup will be short, okay? Now be a good girl and let him make sure you're healthy."

Her younger sister followed almost immediately, completing all of the doctor's requests without a single complaint. The doctor seemed to pick up on this, because he hurried through the tests, much to Sakura's amusement. In less than five minutes Mikasa was up and going, leaving the doctor without a parting glance.

"And is this the new addition to your family, Miss Mikoto?"

"Ah, yes, Doctor Jaeger, this is Sakura."

He beckoned her to sit on the chair next to his and started doing his routine checkup. "Now, I don't know if you're aware, but we've met before. Well, **_I_** met you."

"Huh?"

"Did Helsa not tell you?"

Sakura felt a lump on her throat, which she roughly swallowed. "She died," she said quietly.

The doctor's green eyes widened and then grew sad. "Ah, I'm sorry, dear, I didn't know that. I was friends with Helsa's husband... They were good people." Neither Mikoto nor Sakura said anything, opting to focus on the doctor's procedure. He cleared his throat, aware that he had brought forth a tense silence. "Anyway, I was the one that tended your wounds around a year ago. Which begs the question, just what did you do?"

"I have amnesia. I don't really remember anything before the day Helsa found me."

"No memories? That is a bit strange. I've had a few cases concerning amnesia. Most of them are from the military, and most of them dealt with a hard hit on the head, but all of them regained their memories in around a year or two."

Sakura shifted in her seat. What if she didn't remember, ever? What if she didn't find who she was or returned to her homeland? Yes, she was more than happy with the Ackermans, but she still felt as if she didn't truly belong, whether it was because they spoke different native tongues or the fact that she was a med-nin, trained to both kill and save lives, and most of the people here weren't even aware they possessed chakra.

"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll remember. It's just a matter of patience and not forcing things. Besides, I am quite curious to meet your parents, because I must ask just how did _pink_ hair come to your family?"

Both Mikoto and Doctor Jaeger laughed, and Sakura only chuckled nervously and scratched the back of her neck in embarrassment.

"Oh, yes, I forgot to ask you a favor."

"What can I do for you?"

"Could you please register Sakura? I'm afraid the nearest center is a few hours away and I was under the impression that––"

The doctor raised a hand, stopping the rambling woman on her tracks. "There is no need to explain yourself, Miss Mikoto. It would be my pleasure." He got out a sheet of paper, quill, and bottled ink from his briefcase and placed it on the table. "So, Miss Sakura, what will be your full name?"

"Sakura Ackerman."

He scribbled her name on the paper with the land's alphabet. "Hm... Since we don't know your birth parents I'll put down the Ackermans' names. Is that okay?"

"Yes," Mikoto and Sakura replied in unison.

Doctor Jaeger nodded absentmindedly and jotted down more notes. "And date of birth?"

"June 20, 826."

Sakura noticed Mikoto's shocked face out of the corner of her eye, but she feigned attention on the doctor, who had an eyebrow raised but continued writing. "Oh, happy birthday then, Sakura."

"Thank you."

* * *

_April 4, 844_

"Ah, you brought potatoes today. That's good."

Sakura nodded and smiled widely. "We had a bit extra from yesterday. I'm still a bit new at inventory."

Berdine gave her a reproachful look. "You just started this, my dear. It takes a while to get used to doing this alone. I think you're doing a spectacular work."

Before she would blush at the compliment, but she was so used to being treated nicely by the townspeople that she only widened her smile a bit more until she was showing a bit of her pearly teeth. "I think it's a good think, though. Erick gets to tend the crops and make sure they're higher quality and I sell them."

"And how long have you been doing this?"

"Around a month or two?"

The woman laughed, the sound high and piercing. "Oh, dear, if you only saw the first months of Erick's arrival you would've died of laughter."

"That bad?"

"He was a young husband and his wife was expecting. That made him a bit clumsier than usual, for sure. But you received prior training, so maybe I'm being a bit unfair to poor Erick."

The day, which had been bright until now, darkened almost immediately. Both Berdine and Sakura looked up to see a huge gray cloud covering the sun. By the direction of the wind, it seemed to be heading in the direction of her home, something which made Sakura sigh in annoyance.

"Oh, my, it's going to rain a lot today, won't it?"

"It will... Too bad I can't leave just yet."

"Why is that?"

Sakura beckoned the cart full of food with a disinterested wave. "It's too full. Erick won't be happy with that."

"I'm sure he'll understand it if he saw how awful the weather is going to be. Nobody will be out in the streets anyway."

"You're right, maybe––"

"Excuse me!" a haggard woman interrupted. Sakura would have shot her a withering glare had her eyes not looked so crazed and desperate. "Has anyone seen my son, Anton? He is this tall, has dark brown hair, has a scar on his cheek? Have you seen him? He was playing in the woods. Please."

Berdine looked at the woman sadly and only shook her head. She excused herself from the conversation, leaving Sakura by her lonesome with the worried mother. "I'm sorry, Miss, but no, I haven't seen him." The woman became even more despondent, and the sight only tugged at her heartstrings. Who knew how worried she would be if Mikasa got lost? She wanted to help... And perhaps she was the only able to help at this moment. But could she afford it?

Well, she was leaving early anyway, might as well do a good deed while she was at it.

"But I can help you find him."

The woman's eyes lit with hope. "You can?"

Sakura nodded resolutely.

She reached out and grabbed both of her hands, moving them up in down in unrestrained gratitude. "Thank you so much, Miss! Is there something you want me to do to help?"

"Yes. Please stay here and look after my stall? I don't know how long I'll be gone, but just in case."

"Oh, of course, my dear. Anything you say."

"What part exactly do you think he is in?"

"He likes to play in the east side, but he usually comes back before noon. Maybe he got lost?"

That was a possibility, but it sounded too good to be true. "Okay, I'll start there. Please wait here."

Sakura ran down the mostly empty streets at the speed of a normal human, but once she was a long ways inside the woods with no one around, she sped up to inhuman speeds with her chakra and jumped up to the tree tops, scanning the area for any signs of chakra.

She was about ready to give up in her pursuits after half an hour when she sensed a very small chakra signature, possibly a child's. She grinned in triumph and headed that way, mindful to get out of the treetops and lower her speed once she was close by.

The pink-haired girl reached a small clearing and stood very still. At such close distances, it was impossible to exactly pinpoint the source of the chakra because every living thing had chakra in them. Usually humans had chakra spikes to them, but the signature had stopped being dynamic almost ten minutes ago, meaning the person was asleep or, worse, dead.

Her sensitive hearing caught soft breaths and she tiptoed towards the sound, which came from behind a big tree. She wanted to be annoyed, she really did, but she couldn't help but gush over the sleeping boy who clutched a black cat that appeared completely unamused about the scenario.

" _Aw, this is so cute_ ," she whispered in her native tongue and gathered the sleeping boy in her arms. The cat scrambled away once it was freed, but it stayed close to the pair, hinting that it was attached to the boy, regardless of its annoyance. " _If you want to stay with us you better keep up."_

She shot up and started leaping from tree to tree, though much slower and gentler than before so as to not wake her sleeping companion. When she was close to the forest's entrance she dove down and landed lightly on her feet, unsurprised to see the black cat next to her, licking its paws.

" _Hn, show off."_

Getting back to her stall only took ten more minutes, and the boy was still fast asleep. Anton only woke up once he heard the relieved cries of her mother, which soon became a yelling session as she demanded why he had run off and promising a world of pain once they came back home. Sakura awkwardly stood by, waiting for them to leave the stall, and only smiled slightly when the mother turned to her.

"Oh, thank you so much, Miss! We're new here, but I know where I'll be buying my vegetables for the rest of my life!" Well, at least she got a new, lifetime customer out of the deal. "Now come on, Anton, and you two, Blacky. Both of you are in a world of trouble."

The cat meowed, as if it understood what was going on, and followed after the pair, moving its tail left and right lethargically. The boy sneaked a look backwards and waved at her, offering her a mischievous grin, before his mother grabbed him by his ear and dragged him away.

Blacky? With a name like that, Sakura didn't blame it for trying to run away with Anton.

Sakura sighed and emptied the stall, storing the small amount of leftovers in the cart. She heard a strike of thunder in the west, in the vicinity of her home, and sighed when she realized it was probably raining already.

So much for not getting wet.

After an hour of dragging the cart in the mud and rain, Sakura saw her home in the distance. Sakura frowned when she felt no chakra signatures inside, but maybe they had gone to town to meet up with Doctor Jaeger without her knowledge. Still, the idea behind a warm bath and hot soup was so tantalizing that she sped her pace to a jog. She dropped the cart off under the small, extended roof where they stored all their farm tools and rushed to the front door.

She opened the door and looked down.

Sakura choked back a scream and fell down, landing on her bottom. She desperately slid away from Mikoto's unseeing corpse and the pool of her blood and tried to look anywhere but there but only felt something inside of her break once her back hit something soft.

She didn't want to turn, she didn't want to see, but the blood pooling coating her fingers was enough evidence for what she would see. Still, she jerked her head back and almost vomited when she saw Erick staring back at her, a bleeding hole in his chest.

Sakura messily got up, only for her knees to buckle and give away beneath her. She stretched out her arms to break her fall, but she scraped her palms, yet she didn't feel any pain at all. She was numb. So cold.

" _Mikasa_ ," she whispered in growing horror.

With new determination she got up and frantically searched every corner of the house only to find nobody. She didn't know whether to be relieved or anguished to not find her, because that meant she was alive, but that also meant she could be wishing to be dead instead.

She let out a shrill scream and started thrashing the Mikoto and Erick's. Her control on her strength snapped and she was soon smashing walls and breaking furniture. " _Why is it that when I find happiness, someone takes it away!"_ she yelled in between punches and kicks. " _Why is it that after I do something good for others, something horrible happens to me!"_

The raging girl stopped after she ripped the skin from her knuckles, the pain acting as her anchor to the real world for now. She eyed the room with a wary eye, or at least what was left of the room, and only shook her head in dismay, knowing that whatever she did would change nothing.

Sakura left the room and headed back to the dining table that doubled as kitchen as well. She stared at the unmoving bodies of her foster parents and teared up again, though she did not sob or shake or grimace. " _I will find Mikasa and kill whoever did this to us. I promise there will be blood and pain for this."_

She went back to her room and ripped out her dirty skirt and shirt and changed into the old pants and long-sleeved shirt she had woken up in this world with.

Sakura went back to the woods and immediately took off, uncaring if someone saw her. She needed to find Mikasa as quickly as possible, and that meant she would have to give no shits about the status of her secret.

The rain made it impossible to track by scent, so that meant she would have to track Mikasa by her chakra signature. Luckily for her, she could detect her around a kilometer away, so she only had to close enough and she should be as clear as day.

She felt herself grow weak once she recognized Mikasa's chakra close to her, however it was surrounded by two others. She steeled herself to fight, coating her fists with enough chakra to rip a person apart, and sped up until she reached a small cabin with a lake in the background.

Sakura spotted her almost immediately but had to hold back her speed when she saw Mikasa was surrounded by Doctor Jaeger and an unknown boy. They were talking to her, but they immediately cleared the way when they heard her coming.

She dropped to her knees in front of Mikasa and hugged her tightly meanwhile she checked for injuries. She let her go slightly and unwrapped that red scarf from her head and surveyed her face, her anger churning deeply when she saw the blotches of blood in her pretty features. "Are you alright?"

Mikasa's eyes were empty, and that sight alone was enough to break her heart all over again. "Yes, Eren saved me."

The kunoichi let her foster sister go completely and she stood up, almost immediately noticing the young boy. He was around Mikasa's age, but those eyes of his burned with the determination and hate of an older man. "How did you save my sister?"

"I killed them. I killed the ones who did this to you."

Sakura wanted to feel grateful towards the boy, she really did, and in hindsight maybe there was some affection towards buried deep, but at the moment she was resentful that this nine-year-old boy had taken away revenge from her forever.

Perhaps it was for the best. That monster she had become around a year ago wasn't one she wanted to be again.

"I killed one too."

Her body froze, and she pivoted her torso slowly towards Mikasa, though she didn't look at her in the eye. "Did you do it to protect?"

She nodded absentmindedly.

"She protected me," Eren offered as an explanation.

Sakura managed a small smile and patted both children on the head. "It's good to protect each other."

Doctor Jaeger cleared his throat, drawing the attention back to him. "Ah, Sakura, I am deeply sorry about what happened. I was... talking to Mikasa about her future, and I offered both of you a place in my home. Would you like that?"

There was no way she would be able to return to that home again, not after what had happened, so she had absolutely no qualms in accepting. However, she felt a sense of nostalgia with this offer, because she was back at where she started not even two years ago.

She only hoped the ending wouldn't be the same.


	3. Surviving

Sunrises in Shiganshina were always bright and warm. Not only that, but the air was crisp, refreshing, whether it was because the people kept their district clean or because they were so close to Wall Maria that the freshness of the outside seeped in, allowing for a taste of the wilderness without ever leaving the safety of the walls.

It was in the mornings that Sakura found the time to train Eren, Mikasa, and, quite recently, their blond friend Armin. She had heard a few weeks after the _incident_ on how Mikasa had frozen before landing the kill, and Sakura couldn't help but feel slightly guilty, because if she had been a bit harsher during her training, maybe Mikasa wouldn't have ever been in that position to begin with.

Eren had jumped at the opportunity to learn taijutsu, claiming that he would need it once he enlisted for the army. Convincing Kalura had been a grueling task, but now there Eren was in their practice field, waiting for her with an excited grin. Mikasa was standing next to him, staring at the wall that divided them from the outside world, seemingly brooding.

She frowned but paid it no mind, used to Mikasa's absentmindedness. Sometimes she had half a mind to ask her what she thought about in these moments, but almost immediately decided against it. It's not like she needed to ask, because Mikasa probably mused about the same things Sakura did whenever nobody was looking.

"Good morning, Sakura!"

Said girl only raised a pink eyebrow. "Well, aren't you the ray of sunshine today. What's got in to you?"

An innocent expression crossed his face, and Sakura mentally prepared herself for anything. "Nothing! Nothing! I'm just excited to see you."

"Eren, you're scaring her."

"Damn right he is. Stop being enthusiastic and act half asleep."

"But you'll beat me if I do that."

Sakura restrained the groan that threatened to escape her throat. Arguing with Eren was like arguing with a titan: impossible because they were incapable of understanding. "Anyway, where's Armin?"

"Probably asleep," Mikasa quietly supplied.

Well, it was very early in the morning, and didn't Armin help out in his family's bakery? Sakura shrugged and clapped her hands. "Maybe he'll show up later. Let's start."

"That's not fair," he whispered, and since it was only because of Sakura's sensitive hearing that she caught his sentence, she decided to let it slide.

The ten-year-old boy then pouted, wondering why Sakura was so slack with Armin's attendance when in contrast she would drop a bucket of water on his head if he was so much as a minute late. If he wasn't being so petulant, he would've realized that Armin had been forced to come to these training sessions by Eren himself, not out of his own volition, and maybe Sakura was a bit more perceptive than most people gave her credit for and she respected Armin's wishes.

"Remember, if either of you lands a hit on me I'll teach both of you how to combine a low and high kick smoothly and _maybe_ I'll teach you how to do a body throw from a choke hold."

Eren looked as if he was ready to burst and even Mikasa had a small smile on her face.

Sakura didn't have a trademark pose, since she realized in a real fight she wouldn't even be able to have enough time to attempt it. Instead, she relaxed her legs and shoulders, so that whatever attack either one of her pupils threw at her, she would be ready to adapt and evade.

Mikasa was the first one to attack, throwing a punch aimed at her abdomen and preparing the other leg to to sweep her legs and make her lose her balance. Eren snapped out of his stupor in a second, going for more powerful strike to her face, lacking the finesse of his adopted sister. Sakura pivoted her body ninety degrees to avoid the punch, causing Mikasa to lose the opportunity to use her legs momentarily, and bent her back slightly to avoid the fist to her face.

When they first started these sessions in Shiganshina, Sakura had refrained from retaliating, claiming that they were too young to be on the receiving end of her hits. However, they had grown overconfident, attacking in the most outrageous and dangerous ways that would get them killed if it had been a real fight. Thus Sakura had decided that it would be a good idea to hit back only when their move was too unbelievable or simply wrong. It was a win-win, because the kids no longer screwed up as often, and Sakura had learned to control her freakish strength to the point that she could hit her pupils without breaking their bones. Sure, she used the strength a normal human would use to flick a baby, but at least her secret was safe.

If she had feared the Ackermans reaction about her status as a kunoichi, she was horrified at the idea of the Jaegers finding out about it, or anyone in Shiganshina for that matter. People were very close-minded about different things, especially the citizens of this district, since they were the closest to the titans. Anything that wasn't human, anything that wasn't _normal_ , was an enemy of mankind, and even though Sakura felt pretty human most of the time, she couldn't deny that there were moments that she knew she could turn into these people's worst nightmare.

So maybe it was for the best if she kept her powers hidden in her closet.

She had been so lost in her thoughts that she miscalculated the amount of distance she had to put between Mikasa and her punch, and part of her pinkie's knuckles grazed her shoulder. It was fleeting, it was light, but it was there.

Mikasa must've felt it too, because her gray eyes widened and she immediately stepped back after finish going through her attack. Eren, still lost in his adrenaline, aimed a punch at her collarbone, which she stopped with the palm of her hand. Eren stared at her, wide-eyed, because she had never halted any of his attacks, but she smiled gently at him.

"You both passed."

The boy grinned and high-fived Mikasa, who was sporting a rare grin. If she smiled like that after grazing her shoulder maybe Sakura should let her win more often. Eren started laughing and boasting about how easy the fight had been, asking every once in a while, "Right, Mikasa?" to which she only giggled and nodded along.

Sakura frowned and hit him in the back of the head. "All right, brat, first of all it was Mikasa that landed the hit, not you. So if anyone has the right to dance like a monkey like you're doing, then it's her."

Eren pouted and Mikasa only smiled even wider. "So when do we learn this body throw?"

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? But why?" he exclaimed, dismayed. Even Mikasa looked a bit crestfallen.

"You have work to do, and I have to do a couple of rounds with your father today."

Not only had Grisha Jaeger taken both her and Mikasa as his daughters, he had also taken Sakura as his apprentice. It started when Sakura nursed a delusional Kalura back to health when he was out in the inland, and ever since then they hadn't looked back. He taught her all he knew about medicines and herbs from this world, and Sakura greedily took it all in, aware that she would not be able to expel infections with her medical ninjutsu all the time like she had done with Kalura.

Sometimes she wanted to reveal her secret to Grisha. When there was a need for a surgery, but they couldn't perform it because of the environment, Sakura wanted to step in and take the spotlight, saving both the child and mother and giving that man his leg back and extending the life of that grandmother who wished to see her grandson marry. It was something that had been ingrained in her head, to try her best to save a patient, but for some reason she couldn't come out and do it, because she knew that if she showed people the almost magical way she healed, they would never leave her alone.

They would shower her with both attention and work, gifts and demands, until the situation became too much and she would have to choose who to save, because both her time and chakra were limited. Then people would curse her and despise her for not saving that wife and firstborn son, for letting that brave Survey Corps soldier who lost his limb die of blood loss, for denying that dying grandmother her wish to see her granddaughter marry the man of her dreams...

So no, she didn't want that life.

Selfishness was a ninja trait perhaps.

Eren groaned but he knew he couldn't complain. What Sakura was saying was very true and not an excuse. Mikasa didn't mind, because she knew firsthand how important promises were to Sakura, but she didn't feel in the mood to deal with an impatient Eren today.

"Be good and don't get in trouble today, alright?"

And with that Sakura left her two adopted siblings in the field. Even though she was still dressed in her training clothing and indecent for most people, she was supposed to meet with Grisha in front of the Arlert's bakery. From there they were going to check on a girl's fever, an old man's cold, and, if time permitted, they would go visit the apothecary to see if they had the medicine to cure one of rapidly-spreading diseases in the mainland.

"We're also going to have lunch at home," the doctor said as an afterthought.

Sakura nodded, glad to see they were on the same page in the matter of food. "Good, because those two gave me a bit of trouble today."

"Oh, that Eren, always searching for trouble. I'm really grateful for watching out for them, Sakura. You didn't have to do that."

"Those two are special. It honestly is something I enjoy doing."

The two continued their walk on silence, which was only broken when they reached their first destination and greeted the mother of the feverish girl. She thanked both of them, because ever since they had given her daughter those herbs, her fever had dropped considerably and she was no longer delusional. Still, Grisha asked Sakura to complete a diagnosis and nodded in agreement when her conclusions matched his. The doctor told the mother to keep giving her the medicine for two more days and she would be good to go.

After politely refusing breakfast, the two headed to the old man's home, only to be greeted by his son. The young man let them know that his stubborn father went out to the fields today, even after being reminded that he was sick. Sakura sighed and shook her head, amazed at the pigheadedness of some patients, but Grisha had a better control on his professionalism. With a tired look he told the son to keep giving his father the medicine for five more days and then he would come back to check on him.

Since that visit had taken considerably shorter than what either of them expected, they headed down to the apothecary. Grisha had noticed in his last time that there was a new type of cold prevalent in the inlands and had asked the apothecary to conjure different types of medicine, which Grisha would use on different patients and see which one would work.

"This is one of the ways I stopped that disease a few years ago," he had confessed a couple of days ago.

Grisha entered the apothecary first and almost immediately started exchanging pleasantries with the man.

"Louis! It has been far too long!"

"That it has, that it has. Oh, hello there, Sakura! Doing some rounds with this old man here?"

"He needs someone to carry around his stuff. That bag is apparently too heavy for him now."

Louis guffawed and even Grisha chuckled, which was quite the accomplishment considering he was a very serious man. "Ah, yes, thank you for reminding me, Sakura. Anyway, Louis, you have something for me, as I recall."

The frail old man nodded, his long white hair following his movements, and retrieved five small bottles from behind the counter. "I made all of them with the idea of stopping the symptoms you mentioned, but I'm not sure if I got the right combination. When you come back we can tweak the composition."

Grisha nodded gravely and carefully put the five bottles inside his black case, not bothering to remove the cork and smell the medicine Louis had made. "Yes, I'll tell you about my findings in three days."

"Oh, you're leaving already?"

"Yes, I actually have a ship to catch in an hour."

"Oh, yes, yes, of course. Please don't let me keep you waiting. Have a good trip, Grisha."

"Thank you, Louis, I'll see you later."

"Good bye, Mr. Louis." Sakura bowed her head slightly and almost turned to catch up with the doctor when Louis called her back.

"Make sure to drop by tomorrow at one. I am helping with a birth at four, and you wanted to see one, right?"

The kunoichi nodded ecstatically, glad to finally be trusted enough to help in such a delicate procedure. "I'll be here, Mr. Louis! Thank you so much!"

The walk back to their home was nice and quiet. Though Sakura would rather talk, she felt it was _wrong_ to be too chatty around Doctor Jaeger. It's not that he was unapproachable, because whenever she did strike a conversation with him he was always very responsive and attentive, but he always had such an intense look on his face, as if his thoughts were much too important to be interrupted, that she decided that her questions could wait for another time or another person.

Maybe it was her ability to know when to be quiet that made Grisha so fond of her.

Kalura was almost done with lunch when they arrive. She grinned and greeted them eagerly, asking them about their day. Like always, Sakura was the only one that matched her enthusiasm, complaining loudly about the stupid man that tended to his fields instead of his own health and gushing over the offer the apothecary had given her.

"Aren't you a bit too young to be looking at those things?"

"Oh, please, I'm nineteen! Some girls my age have already given birth, but here I am, by my lonesome, looking after kids half my age."

Her adopted mother raised an eyebrow and placed a steaming bowl of hot soup in front of her. "Oh, and since when did you want children?"

Sakura scrunched her nose. "I'm too young for that."

"Good," Grisha commented from her side. "You _are_ too young for that. You need to go to the university if you want to become a doctor, so no suitors for a while."

Her eyes gained a mischievous glint. "Really, Grisha? Or did you suddenly forget the things we were doing at her age?" Sakura choked on her soup and Grisha started coughing uncontrollably. Kalura smirked and declared, "My work here is done."

"K-Kalura! Don't say those things! What if the kids were here?"

"Then you would give them the talk just like you do to a bunch of strangers' kids."

Just then the door opened, and Eren and Mikasa stepped in with firewood strapped in their backs. "We're back," Eren announced.

Kalura turned around from the sink and smiled at them. "Welcome back."

Any other day Sakura would have paid attention to the family's antics, but she was too busy focusing on her soup and trying to forget the conversation they had earlier. If Eren and Mikasa were here, that meant that––

_No._

That train of thought was stopping, _now_.

"Eren wants to join the Survey Corps," Mikasa uttered, breaking the comfortable silence.

She could feel Kalura's earlier easygoing demeanor slipping into a more negative one.

"M-Mikasa! Why did you tell them?"

"Eren!" Kalura put her hands on his shoulders and shook him slightly. "What are you thinking? Or did you suddenly forget about all the people that die beyond the walls?"

"I didn't!"

"Then–"

"Eren," Grisha interrupted, putting a stop to whatever heated reply Kalura had. "Is there any reason why you want to go outside?"

The boy calmed down, but his eyes remained hard. "I want to see how's it like outside! I don't want to remain ignorant, inside the walls, for the rest of my life! Also... If no one helps out, then all the deaths until now would've been meaningless!"

Something changed in Grisha, she could tell. She wasn't sure exactly what it was, but she was positive something happened. "I see... Well, the ship is waiting. I'll be going now. Come with me, Sakura."

The pink-haired girl had enough restraint to not jump in her seat from surprise. She got up and placed her dishes on the sink, following after the doctor without a word.

"Wait! You have to talk to Eren!

"Kalura, human curiosity is not something you can stop with a lecture." He got out that intriguing key he always wore around his neck and showed it for everyone to see. "Eren, when I come back, I'll show you what I've kept secret in the basement this whole time."

The boy's eyes lit in wonder and excitement. "Really?"

Grisha only hid the key back inside of his clothes. "Really. Let's go, Sakura; a ship awaits."

For all the hurry the doctor had in the house, he was sure taking his sweet time in his stroll to the docks.

"You have been teaching Eren and Mikasa the martial arts for almost a year now. How is that going?"

"They are both eager and talented. I have no doubt that they will be quite the menace when they're older."

Grisha chuckled at her choice of words. "That's good to hear. Eren... Well, he is just like his mother in that aspect: once he gets an idea in his head, it is hard to beat it out of him."

"Human curiosity cannot be restrained with violence, either," Sakura cheekily supplied.

Luckily, the doctor found it humorous enough, because he chuckled. "That is true, which is why I don't have any other choice but to let this fixation of Eren's run its course."

"So what exactly is the problem?"

"Mikasa... Wherever Eren goes, Mikasa is bound to follow."

Sakura's eyes narrowed slightly. That was a statement that had a lot of evidence backing it up, a statement that she wasn't crazy about. She understood why Mikasa had that obsession with following after Eren and looking out for him. He had not only given her the will to fight, he had also given her a home, things Sakura had been unable to give her. Oh, Mikasa adored Sakura, she was absolutely positive about that, but Eren had a special place in Mikasa's heart that he, and only he alone, would be able to have.

"I'm not too worried about that. Mikasa is strong. She can take care of both herself and Eren."

Grisha turned to her, a surprised look on his face. "You're not going to follow them?"

"It's not set in stone that Eren will join the Survey Corps, to begin with. And even if he did... Well, I cannot look after her for her whole life. The day she joins the Survey Corps is the day she becomes an adult, and nobody can look after an adult the way I want to look after Mikasa. So even if I did join the Survey Corps, I still wouldn't feel satisfied."

"But you won't prohibit her from joining?"

"No... I don't have that kind of power. I would if I could, but my hands are tied."

Grisha hummed in assent and looked forward. The dock was there, and people were starting to board the ship. "You are a good sister, Sakura. If my son does decide to join the Survey Corps, my heart will feel a little lighter knowing that you are watching out for them."

"I won't disappoint you, Mr. Grisha."

"Oh, please, Sakura, I thought we were past the formalities."

She smiled sheepishly and stopped her stroll once they reached the dock. "Sometimes I forget, Grisha."

"Take care, all right? Make sure Eren doesn't do anything stupid."

"Sure will!" Not at all... Whatever that demon child decided to do was the law, and Sakura wasn't going to waste time going against his nature.

Sakura stayed long enough to see Grisha off and then took the long way back home. It was only in those long walks that she had time to think for herself, about herself. She still didn't remember a single thing about her past, which had annoyed her endlessly a year ago, but now she worried mostly about Mikoto and Erick, about how they were handed such an undeserving death and how she was given such a great responsibility. Mikasa was one of the most well-behaved children out there, but even she sometimes needed some disciplining. Kalura and Grisha had assumed that it would be Sakura handing out punishments, but soon took the task away from her once they realized she was unable to even land a single light slap on the back of her hand.

How could she? How could they expect her to hit the person she cared most about in the world?

It was for that exact same reason that she refused to dissuade Mikasa from joining the Survey Corps should Eren ever decide to. It was not because she couldn't, because Mikasa would undoubtedly follow her older sister's commands, but because she didn't want Mikasa to resent her. Sakura couldn't deny her anything, even if it meant opening the path to her death.

Sakura sighed and looked up. Sunrises were more beautiful in Shiganshina, but she still contended that sunsets were more beautiful in the farmland the Ackermans owned. The sun would start disappearing from the earth, coloring the skies with beautiful pinks and oranges and purples that contrasted masterfully with the green of the fields and the forests. There were no forests in Shiganshina, at least not very close, and Sakura missed them terribly, missed the sensation of jumping from branch to branch, because that was a feeling she associated with a home she couldn't quite remember.

The ground shook violently, which immediately set Sakura on edge. She observed her surroundings with a critical eye and her knees almost buckled underneath her when she saw a red hand gripping the top of Wall Maria. Almost seconds later a red face looked down on them, its beady eyes calculating, almost as if it was fully aware of what was going on.

All the times she had felt helpless were dwarfed with what she was feeling right now. Looking at the head of the titan, staring at its eyes, she felt such a deep, primal fear take a hold of her heart that she couldn't think, couldn't move. She was frozen in time, imagining her death, imagining a heroic rescue, imagining her flight. She wanted to move, she wanted to hurry to her family, but she could only stare at the titan that was scrutinizing them with an unreadable gaze.

The face bowed soon afterwards and Sakura felt dread pitting in her stomach. She was right to be so alarmed, because not even five seconds later, Shiganshina was covered in a monstrous boom, followed by flying rocks. Luckily for her, she was still far enough to be away from the impact size, but she knew that many others had already lost their lives.

Wait, her house was that way!

Eren and Mikasa and Kalura were there!

Sakura leaped to the rooftops, uncaring about the surprised gasps of the bystanders. She dashed from roof to roof, quickly making her way to her house, only to be stopped by the silliest, most disgusting looking titan standing in between her and the next house. It turned its beady blue eyes toward her, and the brown mustache in his upper lip curled with his mouth when he smiled eerily.

Its chakra though... Its chakra was one of the most horrifying things Sakura had felt. She felt goosebumps appearing in her arms and resisted the urge to shiver violently. The chakra was unnatural, devoid of any malice or goodness, and at the same time _so_ familiar that she froze, allowing the titan to get the upper hand and attack her.

It reached for her with astounding speed, but Sakura was faster and jumped far back, putting sufficient distance between them. She landed lightly on her feet and used the leftover momentum to throw herself at the arm, smashing fist that had wanted to grab her with a chakra-enhanced punch. The bones cracked and the titan moaned in agony, giving her enough time to run away and change her course.

There was no way she would be able to kill a titan at the moment. She could punch them in the face and send their heads flying, killing them instantly, but being in the air would put her into a very dangerous situation, since she could be easily swatted and maybe killed. Climbing a titan was something else she could do, but she wasn't very sure how it would react to her; it could grab her or squash her just as easily as she could kill a bug that was going up her leg.

She was now a couple hundred meters away from her house and almost had a heart attack when she saw that a rock had crushed the wooden home. There was a titan standing over it, but she couldn't see much because its back was facing her. Were they... Sakura blinked and put a little more chakra behind her optic nerves to better observe the blond soldier that was carrying–– Mikasa and Eren! They were alive! Sakura sighed and placed a hand against her heart, weakly noting that it was beating faster than ever.

"STOP!"

Sakura immediately hurried towards Eren. That was no normal scream, that was a plea of desperation and grief.

_Crack!_

There were no cherry blossoms in Shiganshina, she was positive about that. In fact, she was pretty sure there were not cherry blossom trees anywhere within the walls. But at that moment, those scattered splotches of blood looked like the most disturbing, gruesome cherry blossoms petals she had ever seen in her life.

Eren's expression was all she needed to know what exactly happened.

She was in the perfect position. She could kill the titan and run away, unscathed, to her foster siblings. All she needed was to be quiet and soon there would be one less titan in this wretched world.

Unfortunately for Eren, he would have to find another titan to fulfill his revenge.

"Sakura! No!"

There weren't many moments were Sakura cursed her sister, but this was one of them. The titan that had killed Kalura turned around immediately and shot his arm forwards to grab her. She was lucky she had heightened reflexes, because she barely avoided his clutching hands midair and landed on its wrist. She coated the soles of her feet with chakra to stick to the titan and dashed with almost inhuman speed up length of its arm. Once she was in its shoulder blade, she punched it in the face with all her might, the strength so great that the neck could no longer hold the head and it flew out, crashing on a house far away.

Blood was splaying from the open wound, coating Sakura in its gore. She growled softly, " _Die, you piece of shit_." She wanted to keep hitting it, wanted to release her pent up frustration, but she knew that it was no use, because the titan was dead and she wouldn't be able to relish in its pained screams. Besides, what she was supposed to do now was lead Eren and Mikasa to safety and make sure they survived the day.

Her anger could wait for another day.

Sakura leapt from the titans shoulder blades and landed neatly next to the running soldier, Hannes, who had been a good ten meters away before. The three gaped at her, but she kept running to the evacuation site, ignoring their astonished looks.

"I'll explain later," she finally snapped after they kept looking at her like an alien. That seemed to break them out of their reverie, because they stopped looking at her and sped up.

People was gathered at the docks, clamoring and begging to be let inside and evacuate. Most of them parted for her after seeing Sakura coated in steaming blood, a telltale sign that it was a titan's blood. It didn't help that her normally bright green eyes were narrowed and spiteful. The scary-looking girl parted the crowds for her foster siblings and the blond soldier that had helped them, Hannes, persuaded the soldier who was standing guard to let them in the ship.

Sakura found a small spot in the ship and pushed some people to make enough room for the three of them, ignoring the protests of the other refugees. The moans and the desolation, the crying and the panic sent her over edge and made her want to punch something or _someone,_ whichever. Eren kept muttering to himself, Mikasa was damn silent like always, and she was starting to lose her mind.

The boat started moving, signaling that they had reached the maximum capacity. The people waiting to get on grew desperate and some even started throwing themselves unto the ship.

The refugees' heads snapped in the direction of the giant explosion in Shiganshina. Not knowing what was going on was infuriating, but being helpless was just destroying Sakura's sanity. Until now, she was able to do something about things. She could've stopped Kalura's death if she had been faster, could've hurried back home like she was supposed to when those despicable sex traffickers had set their eyes on Mikoto and Mikasa, she could've killed more titans before boarding the ship, but no, here she was, running away like the good coward that she was.

_Love is better motivation than hate and revenge._

Sakura grunted and looked at her side, feeling her cynicism growing at the sight of Eren's angry tears and Mikasa's unseeing stare. Hatred seemed to be doing a pretty good job for the boy. Those eyes brimmed with determination and ruthlessness were perfect for slaying titans.

The boy suddenly stood up and made his way to the edge of the boat, gazing at the countryside. His friend, Armin, tried to stop him, but he only slapped his hand away and declared that he would drive the titans away for good.

She frowned slightly and looked at her side, noting with growing dismay the determination behind Mikasa's eyes. She knew there would be no stopping Eren from following his dream to extinguish titans, and the only way to do that would be through the Survey Corps, the military branch with the highest mortality rate.

Could life stop taking her precious people away for just one goddamn time?

* * *

Armin's grandfather had his hands full caring for Armin, so it was up to Sakura to make sure Mikasa and Eren had shelter and food. She had not seen them much the first couple of days, leaving them to their own devices sometimes through the night. She had the responsibility of feeding them and caring for them, and since they were growing children they needed all the food she could provide, which resulted in her doing oddball jobs to earn enough money to pay for the stable she had found for them and exchanging favors for food.

At the end of the day, Sakura was much too exhausted to answer the one burning question Eren and Mikasa had for her: who exactly was she?

She groaned and plopped down on the haystack. "Again?"

"You promised us an answer," Mikasa replied, still not bulging.

"Believe me, we have a long time ahead of us."

"Sakura, please," Eren pleaded. "I think we deserve to know. We trust you with our lives... The least you could do is trust us with your secret."

The pink-haired girl sighed, knowing his logic was sound and fair. She got up, leaving the haystack, and made her way over to where Eren and Mikasa were standing, urging them to sit down with her. Once they plopped down on the floor, she extended her arms and silently asked them to give her their hands. They slowly placed their hands face up on top of her palms, the welts and angry red lines of their attempt to save their mother still very visible.

"...Will you never speak a word about this to anyone?"

They both nodded firmly.

She gingerly covered their tinier hands with her own and started healing them with her chakra, the bright green glow soothing and warm. Both of them jumped, startled, and instinctually tried to retract their hands, but Sakura held on to them firmly. After a couple of seconds of absolute silence, Sakura released their hands, now perfectly healed and scarless.

"I do not know who I am," she confessed quietly meanwhile the children admired their palms in awestruck shock. "I just know **_what_** I am."

"What are you?" Mikasa whispered shakily.

"I'm not very sure there is a correct translation, but I am a _ninja_ , or, more specifically, a _medic-nin._ My job is to both assassinate and save lives, healing wounds just like how I healed yours."

Eren was still staring intently at his hands, a bright grin spreading across his face. "This is so amazing. What about that strength?"

"What I used to heal your hands is called chakra. Everyone has chakra in the world, but only a few people can use it. I haven't come across anyone able to use it, which led me to believe that either I am a freak of accident or I don't belong in this world." This revelation seemed to hit them harder than her powers, because they now openly gaped at her. She didn't give them much time to dwell on it, because she continued, "I can manipulate chakra to do many other things, like enhance my senses and even my strength. I don't actively make myself stronger, because I'm already powerful as-is, but I can coat my fists with chakra and do what you saw me do to that titan."

"You sent its head flying," Mikasa said in awe. "Is there more you can do?"

Sakura frowned. This was something she constantly wondered, and the answer still upset her, even now. "Yes, there's more, but I don't remember how to do it. It's really annoying, because I can **_feel_** the knowledge there, I just can't access it. When I try to remember, it's as if it's in the tip of my tongue, but then it vanishes for months, repeating the cycle."

"Still!" Eren stood up, barely able to control his excitement. "This is so great, Sakura! If you joined the military, if you helped out the Survey Corps, we could exterminate the titans! We could––"

Sakura's eyes widened and she scrambled to stand, putting her hands in Eren's shoulders to balance herself and draw his attention to her. "No."

Eren blinked, confused. "What do you mean, no?"

"No as in I won't join the Survey Corps. I won't join them and abandon you two." She stared with downcast eyes at Mikasa. "We've been abandoned one time too many."

His shoulders relaxed and he gently took her hands off his shoulders. "The needs of humanity outweigh the needs of two children. We can handle ourselves, Sakura."

She chuckled bitterly. "I don't think you understand, Eren. Why would I want to fight for humanity?"

The question's bluntness shocked him, because he only managed an incredulous, "What?"

"The only two people I really care about in this world are in this stable at the moment. If I have to fight for humanity to protect you two, then I will, but right now is not the moment." Mikasa extended her hands toward Sakura, urging her to help her stand, and she readily accepted, hoisting her up with ease, but neither let go of each other's hand. "Besides, if I joined the military and made my powers known, I would become a weapon. I don't want to become a weapon."

"What's wrong with being a weapon? If it's for the sake of mankind, why wouldn't you want to give yourself to that role?"

Oh, Eren and his consequentialist ideologies... Sometimes the ends didn't justify the means. She felt that she knew that, felt that it had happened before, but there it was again, in the tip of her mind's tongue, out of reach. "Do you know what weapons are?" At the shake of their heads, she continued bitterly, "They are disposable, thrown away once their usefulness is over. They also die like dogs, remembered by loved ones, forgotten by everyone else.

"I'm a human, with feelings and passions, and I refuse to be treated as anything but a human."

* * *

She spotted a familiar blond head in the front of the food stall. Armin was with his grandfather, arguing to receive their day's share of food along with three other loaves, which they claimed was for children. Naturally, the soldier handing them out was unconvinced.

"Is there a problem here?"

The soldier was unamused and glared openly at her. "Yes, there is. You damn refuges are eating all of our food and lying about who's eating it!"

Armin looked up at her with nervous blue eyes. "That's not true! I was trying to get food for you, Eren, and Mikasa!"

He grunted. "She doesn't look like a kid to me."

Her green eyes narrowed, but she knew that the soldier had the upper hand. Besides, the people in line were getting restless and she didn't want to cause a commotion. "Fine, whatever, just give the children the food. I'm not hungry anyway."

He gazed at her with wary eyes but finally relented, handing Armin three loaves of bread and left to get one for his grandfather. The duo left the line and made their way to where she guessed Mikasa and Eren would be when she felt the intensity of Armin's stare. She looked sideways and almost instantly melted at the look of pure guilt in his face. She smiled and placed a gentle hand on his blond head. "Don't worry, Armin, I'm not hungry."

Armin opened his mouth to respond but his grandfather's voice interrupted him, "Sakura! I need to talk to you."

Sakura turned sideways and nodded to acknowledge his request. She looked back at Armin and gave him her most comforting smile. "Go give them their food, would you?"

The boy nodded and left without a word, leaving the kunoichi with his grandfather alone.

"It's good that I found you so quickly," he said softly between pants.

"Hello, Mr. Arlert. I hope everything is okay."

The man frowned. "It's not, or soon it will not."

She made a confused sound with her throat. "What do you mean?"

"Come with me."

Armin's grandfather led them from the crowded courtyard to a secluded hallway. She felt apprehension growing in the pit of her stomach at how careful he was in keeping whatever he was about to say secret, judging by how cautious he was when examining their surroundings.

"The food storage," he began with a sigh. "The government has no way to feed all these people along with the bad season for crops. At this rate, everyone will starve... But word on the street is that they'll send us refugees to retake Wall Maria."

Sakura gasped and took an involuntarily step back. "But that's impossible! We... We're not trained to fight titans!"

Mr. Arlert nodded gravely. "I know, which means this spells the death for many of us, but not everyone. There is a loophole to this: the military. The government won't send away any recruits because they need them now more than ever to fight against the titans. However, they are keeping really quiet about this, because they don't want too many cadets either. There are two cutoffs for the next Cadet Corps class: the person has to be under twenty-five to apply and has to pass a test."

"So you're telling me I should join the military."

"If you want to live past the next year, then yes, I suggest that."

"You saved my life, Mr. Arlert," she whispered, her eyes filled with gratitude. "I promise I'll find a way to save yours too."

The old man laughed, the sound meant to be joyous, but coming out more as regretful and resigned. "No, no, there is no saving me, Sakura. I'm an old man, I can't do much by myself, let alone do something for society. This world needs the young, not the old, and that's the way life works."

"Mr. Arlert... If there is anything, any favor, I––"

"I only ask that you to watch over Armin," he requested. "I have seen how you strongly you keep Mikasa and Eren out of danger, and I only wish you do the same for Armin."

She looked sideways, a slight frown on her face. "I won't be able to do that anymore. Eren has expressed desire in joining the military, and Mikasa will follow... So I can no longer keep them out of danger."

He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, making her stare at his understanding eyes. "Maybe I need to rephrase my request. Protect Armin for me. Keep him alive to the best of your ability."

"You have my word, Mr. Arlert."

She would've protected the boy anyway, but now she had an even stronger and firmer reason to do so.

* * *

"There will be three stamina tests to secure your spot in the 102nd Cadet Corps Class! First you will jog around the perimeter of this training camp until the first two hundred drop. Then you will stop and put on your 3DMG with our help if needed and continue running until the next one hundred fifty drop. The remaining three hundred fifty will carry a fallen cadet and run until the next fifty drop. If you can't run, you will die; if you can't run with your gear, you will die; if you can't run with a wounded comrade, you both will die! We don't need dead people in our ranks!"

Sakura stared grimly at their proctor. She was old, but her voice was commanding and instilled fear in most of the cadet hopefuls. Apparently she wasn't the only one amongst the refugees to hear the interesting piece of information Mr. Arlert had given her. This was the biggest class the military ever received, far bigger than what their budget allowed. They needed to feed all their cadets, and with the lack of food humanity was experiencing, they needed to quickly get rid of the useless ones. In fact, even after the cutoff, they were going to still have an excess of around fifty cadets.

"We will take turns running behind you! If you are too slow and we catch you, you are out!"

It was a ruthless test. Everyone knew that the ones that dropped would die in less than a year, but the proctors still stared at them with unwelcoming, unsympathetic eyes. A little bit of compassion would never kill anyone, but these soldiers must've missed that memo because they were as cold-hearted as they came.

"Ready, set, go!"

They all started jogging immediately, their panic setting them on the edge. Even though Sakura had amazing stamina, she knew better than to lead the line. Those jogging too fast would soon tire out and be the first to drop, after all.

A yell broke her out of her musings and with a backward glance she saw one of the proctors following them catch three unsuspecting cadets. He might as well shoot them right there and save them the misery later on. Sakura sped up then, quickly taking the lead and easily maintaining it, much to the surprise of her fellow competitors.

The running lulled her into a sense of comfort, and she unwittingly remembered when she told her three wards that she was enlisting in the military to save her hide from dying out in the fields. She had wanted them to try to convince her otherwise, to convince her to stay because they had decided not to join the Survey Corps and they needed her, but Eren only smiled happily and asked her to wait for them. Mikasa and Armin nodded reluctantly, still unsure of their own choices, which made Sakura feel a little better.

A whistle interrupted her reverie and she looked around, surprised to see everyone breathing heavily. Some were walking away with dejected heads, telltale signs that they had not made it. She made her way to the small house and asked one of the soldiers to help her put her 3DMG on meanwhile she drank enough water to satisfy her thirst but not upset her stomach at the same time.

"All right you ungrateful bastards, go!"

The remaining cadets started running, though their speed was severely stunted. The 3DMG, though surprisingly light, was still uncomfortable to move around with. It took Sakura around ten laps to get used to the weight, and by then around fifty cadets had already left and were making their way to the center of the field with the rest of the rejected.

She kept jogging lightly in the front, unmatched by anyone. She already attracted quite a lot of attention due to her pink hair, and being the one cadet that didn't get tired was not doing wonders to her reputation. It couldn't be helped that she knew how to use chakra and make her body more resilient and powerful than a normal human's. Well, that certainly gave her an unfair advantage, yes, but she needed to stay alive for the sake of Mikasa, Eren, and Armin.

This wasn't just her life on the line.

Everyone heard the whistle and let out a breath of relief. They headed to the middle of the training grounds and most of them greedily gulped all the water they could take. Sakura only took small sips, mindful to not drink too much. She wiped the excess water from her mouth and looked around, cringing internally at the marked silence between the cadets that were still in the game and those who were out.

It wouldn't hurt to make a conversation with the person she would carry for a while, would it?

"Hey." She should call her a woman, because she certainly looked like one, but her eyes were so lost that she couldn't help but mentally call her a girl. "Do you mind if I choose you to be my partner?"

She recoiled, a bit shocked. "Why me? I'm heavy and tall, and you're so short and skinny. Everyone is betting that you're gonna be one of the first ones to fall right now."

Sakura held back her smirk. "What about you?"

The girl gaped at her and blushed. "I..." She looked away and mumbled, "I bet for you."

She couldn't hold it anymore and giggled. Sakura could feel the stares of people focused on the two of them, but she didn't mind; she was laughing, genuinely laughing, and there was nothing that could hold her back. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. I promise I'll make you win. So, what do you say? Will you let me carry you?"

"I–I guess."

"Thanks. What's your name?"

"Bertha. Yours?"

The soldier yelled at them to prepare themselves. Sakura extended a hand towards her, and was secretly happy when she accepted without hesitation. "Sakura. Nice to meet you, Bertha."

The kunoichi didn't give her time to prepare and put an arm in the middle of her back and another in the back of her knees and she lifted her with ease. She started jogging ahead of the crowd, and had to restrain her laughter when she saw Bertha's shocked expression. Sure, her method of carrying her was a bit unorthodox, but Bertha was too tall and she would sure hit her 3DMG with every step she took. She could also carry her on her shoulder, but then that would be extremely uncomfortable.

So she was the only one carrying her cadet as if she were running in a field of dandelions, complete with the smile on her face and the blush on Bertha's.

Sometimes she really cracked herself up.

Much to everyone's surprise but her own, Sakura finished at the lead once the whistle stopped them again. She was panting, but she was in better shape than everyone else, who thought that the dirty floor would be the best place to lay down and rest. She gingerly put Bertha down and thanked her deeply for spending time with her, even if it was in less than optimal conditions.

"All right, you brats, don't get cocky! You still have three years ahead of you!"

That put everyone's spirits down, especially the ones that hadn't made it, because three years was two years more than what they were expected to survive. Tears filled Bertha's eyes and she brokenly whispered her thanks to Sakura for making her win the bet and turned away from her.

Her heart gave a painful clench and she grabbed Bertha by her bicep. She whirled her heads towards her, with tears streaming down her face and a confused frown.

Sakura was at a loss for what possessed her to grab unto the woman, but her mouth tightened to straight line on its own and she blurted, "Live."

She smiled sadly and left without a word, leaving the winner alone in the field.


	4. 102 Trainees Squad

The entrance ceremony was not only uneventful, but also depressing. They had lost half of the cadet hopefuls, and most, if not all of them, would be dead by the end of next year.

She landed on her bed and put her arm across her eyes, shutting them from the light immediately. She knew that they weren't going to send children to reclaim Wall Maria, but what was the definition of a child? A seven-year-old? A fifteen-year-old? A ten-year-old? What exactly was the cutoff age? If either of those three were ordered to go, she would go crazy.

"Is the bunk below yours taken?"

Sakura removed her arm from her face and sat up to get a better view of the person addressing her. She looked very young, and she was very short, perhaps shorter than Sakura, which was quite the feat by itself. However, she knew better than to judge her based on looks alone; this girl had survived the laps of death, after all.

"No, not at all. Take it."

She smiled, her amber eyes crinkling. "Thank you, Sakura!"

Sakura cocked her head to the side, surprised. "You know me?"

The girl snorted, as if the question amused her. "Who doesn't know you? Not only did you carry a girl that looked twice your weight, you finished first. Besides, the hair doesn't help."

Sakura smiled sheepishly and ran a hand through her long pink locks. "Heh, true, true. But it's a bit unfair how you know mine and I don't know yours. We're gonna be bunk mates, after all."

The girl put her suitcase on her bed and beckoned her to come down. The nineteen-year-old did so quickly, foregoing the ladder and jumping down straight ahead. This action seemed to amuse her new bunk mate, because she started giggling uncontrollably.

"Is something wrong?"

She waved a hand up and down. "No, no, nothing. It's just that people say that you're this cold and serious person who doesn't want to meet people and it's just funny that you did that right now."

Sakura frowned and pouted, not appreciating how the rumors painted her as such an unapproachable person. She smiled often, right? Or was it maybe how intimidating she had been in the test? She should've known it was going to bite her in the ass. "I don't know where that rumor came from, honestly."

The girl extended a hand towards her. "Petra Ral from Honig, in the middle of Rose."

She took her hand and shook it firmly. "Sakura Ackerman from Shiganshina, south of Maria."

Petra immediately retracted her hand from hers, and looked at her in a mixture of shock and apprehension. "Where you there when..." she trailed off, unsure on how to continue her question, or too scared to offend her, Sakura wasn't too sure.

She appreciated the gesture, nevertheless. "Yeah. I was there."

"I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have asked. My parents were from Shiganshina too, but they moved to the north before I was born. I heard many of their friends died that day."

"We were unprepared," she told her quietly. She remembered her inability to save Kalura, her helplessness as the Armored Titan broke through Wall Maria, her failed promise to protect her wards. "No one saw it coming."

"You saw the titans then? How... Are they as scary as everyone says?"

She sighed and sat down on the floor between their beds and the other two bunk beds in the other side of the room. She wondered where their other two roommates were, but then she remembered that she had finished her dinner earlier than anyone else and had quickly retired, meaning that they must be still eating. "They are scary, but what they do is scarier. Especially because they're so big, you can only feel like an insect in comparison."

"That was my main reason for not wanting to join the military. I can't bear the thought of meeting them..."

"Then why are you here, if you don't mind my asking?" She didn't phrase her question rudely; she was genuinely curious as to why the girl had joined the military if she was so scared of titans. From what Sakura could tell, she wasn't in any danger of being chosen to go retake Wall Maria because she was a citizen of Wall Rose. If anything, she should be avoiding this place at all costs.

"My dad wants me to join the Military Police and get as far away from Wall Rose as possible. They're scared one of those two special titans might appear any time soon and take us by surprise again."

Sakura nodded slowly, a thoughtful look in her face. "That makes sense. I don't blame your dad for thinking like that. I'm not entirely sure about all of this either."

"What about you, Sakura? What do you want to do after all of this?"

She shrugged. She still wasn't sure about what she was going to end up doing. Deep down she knew chances were she had to join the Survey Corps, but she still held on to the hope that she would be able to convince Eren to join the Military Police and live a peaceful life inside Wall Sina. Who knows, maybe he would marry Mikasa there (or not, if they didn't like each other that way when they were older, she was okay either way), and she would marry some civilian who could give her a taste of a normal, stress-free life and make her forget about Shiganshina.

"I'm not very sure right now. It could honestly go either way."

Petra cocked her head to the side, her gaze confused. "You don't want to join the Military Police."

"Still not sure what I want to do. There are many variables involved."

The girl's mouth opened slightly and she close it soon afterwards, nodding in understanding that she didn't feel like discussing the topic at hand. "Hm, I wonder where our roommates are."

Sakura snorted. "Maybe I scared them away?"

The girl laughed and her honey eyes crinkled in amusement. "That would be awesome! Imagine having a whole room to ourselves! No need to worry about––"

A knock interrupted their door and one of their trainers whose name escaped Sakura stood at the door rigidly. Both girls jumped and stood at full attention, their right hand over their heart and their left behind their backs.

"Due to a lack of girls, you two have been assigned a room to yourselves! Remember that there is training in the morning!"

"Sir, yessir!" they replied in unison.

The commanding officer's glare softened a bit and he closed the door behind them, leaving them a mess of giggles as soon as they were sure he was far away. "We should say stuff like that more often!" Petra said between gasps.

Sakura nodded along, unable to form a reply. Soon after their sniggers died they both agreed they were exhausted and quickly went to bed. Even though the other two beds were free, Petra still took the one below hers.

She faced the other two bunk beds as Petra's soft snores filled the room and couldn't help but think that Bertha could be sleeping with them in this room right now.

* * *

_You had chakra, of course you beat the stamina test. You could have been me, and I could have been you, if you didn't have your precious chakra. And now here I am, facing titans. And now here I am, about to die, without anyone crying for me._

* * *

It was customary that the cadets were tested on their balance the first day after the ceremony. Not only did it give the trainees a feel of what they were going to use for most of their military careers, it served as a way for the officers to quickly judge where in the gifted spectrum the cadets were.

Their instructor was a harsh man by the name of Emil Ernst. His hair was silvery and his face was filled with wrinkles, but his eyes held such wisdom and experience that there was no single trainee who dared to cross him. Rumor was it he had killed over one hundred titans in his career in the Survey Corps before joining the Military Police and even quickly rose through the ranks there.

There were five 3DMG testing sites set up so that five cadets could go at the same time. Though this made the process slow, since there were three hundred people to go through, it did give everyone a clear view of what was expected of them and what they were supposed to do.

Sakura admired Petra's form. Though she had made her hesitance to encounter titans very clear, she was masterful in keeping her balance and people were already murmuring that she had a very real shot at being the valedictorian. Though it slightly irritated her that people were making such a long-term judgement based on a simple task, she had to admit that Petra's form was by far the best.

"Ackerman!"

She sighed under her breath and made her way to the testing site Emil was pointing at. She could see that suddenly all the stares were on her, but she didn't care about that. What she cared was about the officer currently strapping the 3DGM around her waist, making sure he didn't screw up anywhere. She knew her inhuman reflexes would kick in if something went wrong, but she didn't want to raise unnecessary questions right now; her pink hair was already a novelty.

They hoisted her up and she felt a tiny bit of panic at not being able to touch the ground but she quickly got used to the feeling of being in the air. To be honest, she felt a certain degree of freedom in being up in the air. Usually she required to actively use chakra to perform something extraordinary, but here she was, "levitating" without using her power once. For once, she felt as she was achieving something based on her own merits.

Now that she was used to the feeling, she relaxed her somewhat stiff body slowly, allowing her to shift as she went adapted to the shift of the wires. Soon her body was so relaxed that she was swinging lightly along with the wires, completely at ease with the feeling by now. People were starting to murmur in the crowd, pointing fingers at her and making her feel uncomfortable.

"Okay, that's enough. Bring her down!"

Sakura felt slightly disappointed that her moment of freedom was over so quickly, but she quickly squashed it by reminding herself that she would be using the 3DGM for quite a long time.

Even though Emil didn't tell her anything, her perceptive eyes could see the surprise and slight awe that he had for her performance. That was enough to make her feel proud of herself, because for once in her life people were amazed by something she had done herself. She did not have to rely on her muscle memory or her chakra to do this, this was all her and her gift for learning quickly.

Petra tackled her arm and shook her slightly. "That was amazing! How did you do that?"

"Do what?"

" _That_. You just stood there like if nothing was happening. It looked as if you could walk on air!"

She didn't know how to react. If she brushed off her comment and said it was nothing, she would come off as arrogant and maybe upset her rapidly-becoming friend. However, if she went and lied about how hard it was, she might come off as arrogant as well for overplaying her feats. So, either way, it was a lose-lose for her. "I guess I just felt relaxed up there. Tall, you know, something that we're not."

That seemed to be the right answer, because she giggled. "I'll follow your advice next time. Could you give me some pointers later on, though?"

Sakura smiled. "Sure, Petra. Just tell me when and I'll be there."

* * *

It was the first time the 102nd Trainee Corps Class saw her excited, but right now they couldn't care less. It was hard listening to a lecture trying to persuade them that something useless they were about to do was actually useful. They were hypocrites, really, trying to convince them to practice hand-to-hand combat when it wasn't graded that highly anyway.

"You're too excited about this," Petra commented with a sulky voice.

Sakura gaped at her, horrified about her  _lack_ of excitement. "Are you kidding me? This is awesome!"

"I take it you have some experience in this."

"My specialty, if I can call it that."

"You have many specialties, do you know that?"

"So I've been told, but so do you."

"I guess we're women of many talents, aren't we?"

"Rawr."

"Ackerman! Ral! If you're done with your girly chat we would like to get on with this lesson!"

The two girls froze up and looked down to the floor, their cheeks heating up instantly when they heard the barely contained snickers around them. Ugh, red cheeks clashed horribly with her hair.

"Ackerman! Bozado! You're fighting here!"

She made her way to where Emil had pointed, her cheeks still a bit red from embarrassment. Standing there was a man with unruly dirty blond hair a couple of inches taller than her. His small hazel eyes were cocky and he seemed to have a perpetual smirk. "So I got paired up with Pinky, huh?"

Sakura's eyes twitched in annoyance. She vaguely recalled the cat she saved, Blacky, and suddenly felt guilty for not stealing him and renaming him. "Don't you have better things to do than antagonize girls, you old man?"

Bozado tried to play it off cool, but she noticed his hands clenching and unclenching, a clear sign of irritation. " _Hey_ , I'll have you know I just turned seventeen, so I don't know what you're talking about,  _Pinky_."

Her nose wrinkled in disgust. If this kid was two years younger than her, just exactly how old did she look? She grew slightly panicked until she remembered a conversation she and Petra had earlier about their appearances, how Sakura just adored her honey hair and Petra commented that her ivory skin looked youthful enough to make her think she was fifteen.

"Start!"

Bozado got into a sloppy fighting stance meanwhile Sakura just stood there, relaxing her muscles. After countless of practices she had learned that her body was best-suited to retaliate, not start. This gave her a chance to see her opponent's first movement and devise a strategy to quickly incapacitate with the minimum amount of effort and time required.

"Ladies first," he said with an arrogant bow.

"Go ahead then," she replied without missing a beat.

That seemed to get him, because now not only did his fists clench, but his eyes narrowed even more. "I'm being nice here. Hit me."

"I've made it a habit to let my opponents hit me first. It would be too unfair otherwise."

His forehead twitched and his lip curled. "Why you!" He launched himself at her with a bit too much force, but she had already seen his punch coming a mile away. She sidestepped and put her foot where she was, immediately tripping him. She quickly got away from him and took his old spot, standing there innocently and looking away.

He scrambled up and glared daggers at her. "That was unfair!"

"That's why I let you go first."

Bozado growled and charged at her with the intention of putting her in a choke hold and possible doing a body throw. Even though he had been acting cocky beforehand, Sakura knew that he had a very good reason, because he knew what he was doing. Sure, his form was somewhat sloppy, but he had obviously had training in hand-to-hand combat, something most of the recruits couldn't boast about.

She crouched, avoiding his choke hold, and swept her leg at him, hoping to throw him again. Much to her surprise, he jumped high enough to avoid the attack and as soon as he landed he aimed a low kick at her abdomen. She knew avoiding this one would be hard because she was crouching, but she bent her back enough to avoid the kick narrowly and used the power of her arms to quickly lift her body backwards to do a handstand and let herself fall gracefully enough to land lightly on her feet.

He just stared at her in shock but shook his head, snapping out of his reverie. He aimed a punch at her shoulder but she stopped him with a swift kick to his inner arm. He cried out in pain, and she used his distraction as an advantage to move next to him, wrap one arm around his waist and the other one behind his head, and she brought them both down to slam him to the floor as if he were some little kid.

The impact probably ripped the skin from her knuckles, but that was fine, since the point of the spar was to  _not_ kill her partner. His head was moving from side to side, probably dazed. She had gone a little bit overboard, because her left shoulder hurt like a bitch and that wasn't supposed to happen. She retrieved her hand from the back of his head and stood up, yet again ignoring the blatant stares from her fellow cadets.

He was probably still seeing stars, but she saw his eyes focus on her, and from the frown on his face he must not be very happy with her. She extended her left hand first to help him up, but upon seeing the blood dripping down from her knuckles, she quickly changed it, smiling sheepishly down at him. Seeing that she was not unscathed probably did wonders to his mood, because he took her hand and hoisted himself up.

"Not bad, Ackerman."

"Sakura."

"I knew that."

"All right,  _Bozado_."

"Oluo."

"I knew that."

* * *

The training field was empty except for a tiny pink-haired girl doing push ups, her light breathing betraying the number of sets she had already done. The sky was darkening quickly, which meant curfew would soon be called and she might miss dinner, but she couldn't care less. She was working, training her physical strength to her body's limits. Today she had seen Petra carry a grown man by herself with little to no effort. Sure, she could carry three times her own size easily, but that was with the help of chakra.

She wasn't very sure where the limits of her body stopped.

It surprised her, how agile and powerful the cadets were. They threw themselves down cliffs to see how easily they could turn and shoot the grappling hook to stop their descent, they ran for miles with heavy backpacks, they cut down trees with just their steel blade and muscle... The cadets did all of that  _without_ chakra. They were amazing in that aspect, and they were just first years. No one had hailed a single one of them a genius...

Well, no one until now, but there were whispers of a certain pink-haired prodigy who outranked all of them because of a tiny  _insignificant_  thing called chakra.

Her peers and superiors admired Sakura, but they didn't admire  _her,_ but rather her  _chakra_ , and they weren't even aware of that. To them, Sakura was simply a hidden gem in a field of coal. If she had been normal, she would've been even worse than coal; at least coal could be turned into a diamond. If she had been normal, maybe Bertha would be here in her stead.

Everyone wanted to be like Sakura, but she wasn't even like them to begin with. They were comparing themselves to a farce.

Her arms shook and she collapsed on the floor, her chest receiving the brutal end of the fall. She groaned and turned her body around so that she was laying down with her back against the ground.

The sun was almost set, and the stars were starting to appear in the purple sky. Even though the darkness covered most of the field, if enhanced her eyesight she could see almost as clearly as if it were daylight. As much as she wanted to hate what made her different than the rest of the people she would fight with, she couldn't help but admit it was extremely useful.

She heard footsteps approach her and she wasn't at all surprised when a woman stopped just before hitting her head. Her skin was darker than most, and her eyes were two large black jewels that glittered with amusement and something else. From her vantage point she looked taller than her, but then again that wasn't hard considering Sakura was one of the shortest recruits.

"You will miss dinner if you continue like that."

The woman extended a hand towards her and Sakura warily took it. She had never seen her before, which was a bit weird, since her looks were quite exotic and she almost never missed anyone like that. Then again, if Sakura was bad with names, she was horrible with faces.

"Thanks," she murmured, still a bit out of her element. "I know this will sound rude, but who are you?"

She laughed, the sound harsh and throaty. "It is quite alright, Sakura Ackerman. I don't expect you to know everyone in our class, especially when most people avoid you like a plague."

The pink-haired girl blinked. She was actively avoided? "What? Why?"

She raised a thick black eyebrow, as if the question should already have an answer. "Your determination intimidates most people. Not many can do five sets of fifty push-ups in less than an hour."

"You've been watching me?"

"Perhaps I admire determination more than I fear it."

"You never told me your name."

Her lips curved into a smirk. Everything about her was exotic, and Sakura could feel herself attracted to the mysterious aura she exuded. "Amina Talman, at your service. I am your new roommate."

Sakura's body stiffened. She hadn't expected that, hadn't thought that they would separate her and Petra. "What about Petra?"

"Oh, she's still in your room, of course. It's just that my three roommates were shipped off to the landfills ––a much better fate than those who failed the entrance exam, if you ask me. So instead of leaving me alone they decided to pair me with the room occupied by our class's two geniuses."

"And you're not intimidated at all?"

"Like I said, there is beauty in determination. I want to become stronger, and you two can help me with that."

Sakura crossed her arms, suddenly wary about Amina's reasons for seeking her assistance. "And you want me and Petra to help you?"

"I thought that was obvious, but yeah, I do. If our instructors decided to rank us tomorrow, I would probably be in the last ten."

The military ranked the Trainee Corps at the end of every year to measure their success and point out where things could be improved. This also happened along the same dates the graduating class chose their branch. The 100th Trainee Corps Class was going to graduate in six months, which meant they still had half a year to go before the rankings.

"Unless you want to join the Military Police, I don't see why that matters too much."

"I want to join the Military Police. It is the only reason why I came here."

Now it was her turn to be incredulous and raise an eyebrow. "Well, it's a good thing that you sought us in the first year. I don't think we would've been able to do much later on. Have you asked Petra if this is all right with her?"

"She said it was fine. I just needed to confirm with you."

Sakura's eyes narrowed and she pouted. "Well, at least I don't have to deal with that old man so much anymore if I'm going to train you."

"I asked Oluo Bozado for help too and he gladly took me in as well."

"You're not very good with negotiations are you? You should've kept that a secret."

"He's one of your two only friends. I might even venture and say he's one of your best friends."

It was very hard for her to keep the horrified expression from her face. "Oh dear, no. Hell no. If anything we're rivals."

"So are you going to help me or what?"

Sakura may have been nice, apparently contrary to popular belief, but even she knew she was being played like a fool by this woman, which was quite weird considering it was  _she_ who was asking for help, not the other way around. "What do you have for me?"

Amina smirked, as if she had suddenly reeled in the bait. "For starters, a better image. You have no idea how useful it will be once you're in the Military Police to have an approachable image."

Ah, nothing felt nicer than having the upper hand. "You assume I want to join the Military Police. That was your first mistake."

"Who wouldn't? It was a logical assumption," she replied a bit defensively. Though Sakura was quickly growing to dislike Amina, she couldn't tell her to go away, be it because of the banter or the fact she was the first person to approach her willingly in almost four months. Even a girl like her could grow lonely. "I'll be honest, I didn't think you would give me such a hard time with this, especially because your friends already agreed with me."

Sakura sighed and gazed past her to their cabin which acted as a mess hall, where people were already filing out to their dorms. So much for dinner. "I was going to help you, no questions asked, but then you overplayed your hand and thought I had to be manipulated. I don't like being manipulated, and I don't like being used. I guess that was your mistake."

Much to her surprise, Amina looked thoroughly chastised and ashamed. "Perhaps there was some wisdom in my father's words. You are right, and for that I ask for your forgiveness."

"Good, you have it. We start tomorrow at dawn, alright?"

Her dark eyes widened, surprised at the sudden change in her disposition. She smiled tentatively and nodded shyly, a sharp contrast from the sly girl that had approached her not even ten minutes ago. Her eyes lit with something and she reached into a pouch she carried in her back and took out a piece of bread and bottle of water. "Oh, here you go. I forgot I brought these for you."

Sakura took them from her greedily and started munching them, uncaring if she had bread crumbs around her lips and if she drank like a mule. "Say, if you wanted to have the upper hand, you should've just bribed me with food."

"I'll keep that in mind next time I want something," she noted with a giggle.

* * *

Just as Amina had predicted, Sakura had become much more approachable after she decided to tutor her. She was no longer regarded with fear, but rather respect, and this improved her mood greatly. Her pupil, though lacking in the physique department, was very eager, waking up before sunrise to run laps and working on her stamina until dusk. She, Oluo, and Petra usually took turns training Amina, because waking up extra early and going to bed just before curfew was extremely taxing on the body and mind, especially with the normal cadet training they went through.

Sakura had also started depending less on her chakra. In the next six months of training, she gained around fifteen pounds of pure muscle, and though it wasn't very outwardly obvious, Sakura could feel the effects whenever she picked or pushed something without the help of chakra. She was naturally strong, yes, but this was something new, something that was  _hers_ and hers alone.

That's not to say she neglected her chakra training, because she didn't. As much as she felt uncomfortable having something that naturally made her better than everyone else, her chakra was a part of her and she needed to nurture it, especially since she needed it to protect Mikasa, Eren, or Armin. Her knowledge of chakra was limited ––  _very_ limited–– because for now she only knew one ninjutsu and that was all she could practice when she was positive she was alone. There were two parts to chakra: the physical and spiritual one. She honed the physical part every day, which made her naturally stronger, but the spiritual part was rather lacking since both her experiences and studies of jutsu were forgotten or gone for good.

The only remedy she figured out was meditation. It wasn't the best, because she was still walking in the dark when it came to meditation, but she felt good after clearing her mind for sometimes even an hour. After a couple of weeks of meditation she noticed that moulding her chakra to enhance some parts of her senses and physique had become simpler and more natural, which encouraged her meditation bouts.

"Hey, Pinky, are you gonna sit there with that stupid look on your face or go to class?"

The level of clear-headedness and peace that had taken her twenty minutes to achieve came crashing down immediately. She opened one green eye to glare icily at Oluo, who was gazing down at her with an annoying smirk.

"Thank you for interrupting my meditation period!"

"You're welcome. Now are you gonna go or do I have to leave you? We're learning about titan killing today."

"Do you have any idea how long it takes me to clear my thoughts?"

"It didn't look like you were very peaceful there, with that frown and all. If anything, I would say you were brooding."

Sakura pouted, peevish that she had been found out. She extended an arm towards Oluo and ordered him to help her up with a single look. He raised his eyebrows, amused at her expression, but hoisted her up without a word. She dusted the dirt from her uniform and he started walking away to where their classes were, leaving Sakura to catch up with him.

"You know, just because you're the best in this class doesn't mean you can't go around skipping class," he commented offhandedly once she was sauntering next to him.

"I wasn't  _skipping_ , I was mediating.  _Big_ difference. Besides, since you found me, that means I didn't miss class."

Oluo snorted. "Yeah,  _today_ , but you're conveniently forgetting all those tardies. Where would you be without Petra and me?"

She grunted but offered no response, because there was nothing she could say to dispute the claim. She was absentminded nowadays, either thinking about her three wards or keeping her nasty nightmares at bay. Her ivory skin was paler than usual, and black bags had recently taken residence under her eyes. She wasn't sure if Petra or Oluo had noticed, but if they had, she was grateful they hadn't asked, because she didn't know how to explain.

They arrived at the class just before their instructor closed the door. Usually, they had another teacher who taught them the history of the three Military Branches and their codes and regulations, but since today they were going tot talk about titan-killing, Emil Ernst had taken over the stage today.

If there was something the cadets hated more than hand-to-hand combat, it was definitely lectures. They had come here to fight for a chance to live within Wall Sina, and some were even here to fight for humanity, but no one was here to learn about the history of the 3DGM unless it had something to do with learning how to  _handle_ the 3DGM, which was a big, fat no most of the times.

Still, everyone was alert and paying attention for today. This lesson was both important and useful.

"All right, who can tell me how to kill a titan?"

The simple word  _titan_  made her involuntarily shiver. She still remembered the utter terror she felt not under its gaze, but because of its chakra. The familiarity was so  _wrong_ but there at the same time that she had been confused and rendered immobile with just being in their presence.

Sakura thought people's hands were going to shoot up in the air, but surprisingly nobody dared to. It wasn't because they were scared of Emil, though most of the times they were, but everyone looked genuinely confused, as if they hadn't thought about it beforehand.

She remembered the smiling titan, the one that had killed Kalura almost half a year ago. She had punched it in its face and set its head flying a couple of meters. That titan was certainly dead, right? After all, how could a headless titan eat?

"Yes, it was a question many people had when those bastards first appeared. Nothing worked. Not even cutting their fucking heads off."

Nobody, except Petra and Oluo, noticed the pink-haired student stiffen violently. Petra became concerned once her green eyes gained a horrified and enraged edge.

Sakura barely listened to the rest of the lesson. She learned that titans were dependent on the sun and they could only be killed by cutting a special place in their nape, but that was it. So that shit was still alive, eating more humans? She still hadn't avenged Kalura's death? Sakura had been convinced that the smiling fucker was gone for good, but obviously that was not true.

"Sakura," Petra whispered worryingly. "Are you okay?"

She visibly snapped out of her stupor and managed a weak smile towards Petra. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine."

* * *

_You had chakra, and you still couldn't save me. You were standing right there, watching, but you didn't do anything. What, too scared to let other people know who you are? Too afraid that we would fear you, condemn you? Well, congratulations, because now I'm dead but at least you got to keep your secret a bit longer, right?_

_And to add insult to the injury, you couldn't even_ kill  _the titan! If my Eren were to die at its hands..._

* * *

The Trainee Corps had three different centers, all located between Wall Sina and Wall Rose now. One of them was near a wide plane, the other by a lake, and the last one by a big mountain. The current 100th Trainee Corps class was in the wide plane, which meant that the 103rd Trainee class would be assigned to the wide plane training area, the most coveted one out of all three.

The least wanted area would be the one near the mountains, which was the 102nd Trainee Class's home. Their instructors would make them run up and down the mountain every Sunday. Though they had been doing this for nearly eight months, it still made everyone detest Sundays, even if they had the rest of the day off to do as they pleased.

Sakura's calves and thighs were burning, but she carried on. Amina was jogging next to her, panting and shivering from the brutal cold, but she refused to be anywhere but next to her. Petra and Oluo, on the other hand, were bickering ahead, something about cheating in an artillery test. It made her wonder why people considered Oluo to be their friend when they were only constantly fighting.

A pair of long pink strands stuck in her sweaty face and she pulled them back with an annoyed grunt, only to have them hit against her cheeks with each step she took. "That's it. I'm cutting my hair."

Amina replied with a skeptical voice, "You're cutting your hair?  _You_?"

Sakura turned and glared at her slightly. "What?" she barked. "You doubt me?"

Her demeanor scared a few people around her and they either sped up or slowed down. Amina, on the other hand, was quite nonchalant about it. "It's just hard to believe. I wouldn't be surprised if you had a shrine dedicated to your hair hidden somewhere in our room."

"I don't  _worship_ my hair. I just like it."

"You adore your hair, and you're thinking about cutting it."

"It's annoying and it has gotten too long. For giving me second thoughts you're gonna help me out now."

Amina  _tsked_  and glared at her slightly. "Ha! As if. You would cut me into tiny pieces if I so much as cut an extra centimeter."

"Well, more of a reason to be cautious, right?"

The rest of their jog was silent, which was good because they were going through the most beautiful part of the mountain, especially now that it was the beginning of summer and the trees looked healthy. Running in the mountain had been torturous, especially when there had been a snowstorm the day before.

Their mess hall cabin had never felt so delicious before. Sakura sat down with Petra, Amina, Oluo, and Oluo's black-haired roommate Jett Kaiser, as usual, and they chowed down their lunch without a word. Now that she thought about it, nobody was talking, probably too tired and hungry to even make an attempt at a conversation.

"Hey, Jett, want to practice after this?" Petra asked hopefully, breaking the comfortable silence. She was so intent on gauging Jett's expression that she missed how Oluo's eyes narrowed menacingly at his food.

He raised a dark eyebrow, as if asking  _are you kidding me?_  "Where do you get all this energy from, Petra? We just finished running up and down a damn mountain."

"There's always time for practice, especially with rankings coming up in a month."

The subject aggravated most of the people in the surrounding tables, because nobody was looking forward to their exams. Sure, low-marks did not mean that they would be shipped off, but if an instructor decided that they weren't fit to continue then they were going to be seeing a landfill for the rest of their lives. And of course the ones sitting on the table, with the exception of Amina, were the least worried about the test considering their talent.

"Sakura is getting a haircut. Don't you want to help out?" Amina asked, hoping to divert Petra from the topic.

The brown-haired girl ––who now looked older than her so she should really stop referring to her as a girl–– grabbed her by the shoulders and started pushing and pulling her. "You're cutting your hair?" she exclaimed. Luckily most of the mess hall were now holding various conversations, which meant that the comment had not been as loud as Sakura heard it.

"Yeah," she replied with a twitch.

"Ooh, I want to help! Sorry, Jett, maybe another time!"

"I didn't even agree in the first place..."

The minute Sakura finished her soup Petra grabbed her by the arm and started pulling her away. She called Amina to help her out, and both Sakura and her knew better than to protest their mother-hen friend. She borrowed a pair of scissors from the room next to them and boasted about her hair cutting techniques because her grandfather had been one of the best barbers in Honig.

"Oh, I'll leave your hair absolutely wonderful! But first, we'll take a bath and then come back."

What Sakura thought would be a horrible afternoon soon became one filled with laughter and jokes. Petra told a story on how one time she spilled cranberry juice on her skirt and had to hide it from everyone or else they would've thought it was period blood. Amina then related how she had cried to her mother for an hour because of her period because she thought she was pregnant and she wanted a little sister, not a daughter.

So much talk about menstruation led her thoughts back to Mikasa. She would be eleven now, a normal age for a girl to get her period. Sakura imagined how scared and traumatized she would be, apparently bleeding from a place she wasn't supposed to be bleeding without a single explanation. Every girl received the talk about her monthly cycle. Sakura got it from Mikoto, but Mikasa had no female comfort.

Petra was halfway done with her cutting her hair and talking about an embarrassing crush she had when she was ten when a loud knock interrupted their talk. Amina, being the least occupied, stood up from their little circle and went to open the door, revealing a courier with a gentle, old face. He handed Amina a single letter, tipped his hat a little, and left without a word.

"This is for you," Amina said with a small frown, handing Sakura the letter with her name and address written in the front. The handwriting was eerily similar, but in the end unrecognizable. _  
_

Sakura unfolded the paper and a wide smile spread across her face when she realized it was Mikasa's handwriting.

"Who is it?"

"My sister," she breathed back.

"Oh... Um... Should we..."

"It's no problem."

Both Amina and Petra gazed at her curiously. "You sure?"

Sakura shrugged and her smile widened, as if that was possible. "I trust you both."

_Dear Sakura,_

_Ee finally found someone who was able to take this letter to you. Eren, Armin, and I are stationed in the fields right now, growing crops. The work is hard, but they give us food and a place to sleep, which is more than most people get so for that we're grateful. Armin's grandfather along with most of the people were sent to retake Wall Maria just a month ago, and we know that you would've been there since anyone older than eighteen was ordered to go. It's also a good thing that you applied last year, because now the cutoff age for the military this summer is twenty, so you wouldn't have made it._

_I have been looking after Armin and Eren as much as I could, but it's hard. So thank you for looking after us. We miss you a lot, but we know this is necessary. Eren still says that we're going to see you next year because we're going to join the Trainee Corps, but I'm still not sure yet. I do know that I don't want to continue working in the farms._

_We don't know when this letter will reach you, but just in case, happy birthday. We promise to give you an extra big hug... next time we see you._

_Love, Mikasa, Eren, and Armin..._

The only sound in the room was the  _click_ of the scissors, because Sakura was definitely  _not_ crying.

* * *

_Have you ever thought that most of the things that happened are your fault? They are. Helsa takes you in and is murdered. We take you in, and my parents are murdered. The Jaegers take you in, and look what has become of Eren. Look where we are now, working to death in a field. See the pattern? Good, because you're not the only one that notices things. You call yourself a_ iryo-nin _, but how many lives have you saved? A_ kunoichi,  _yes? But how many lives have you taken to protect us?_

_We're next, and like always, you're going to be the one to survive.  
_

_Some kind of winner you are._


	5. Fake

She was ready for the final test that would determine their rankings for their second year. After all, even last year when she had been horribly sick the day testing took place ––to the point that she could barely breathe because her nose was stuffed and she couldn't balance because she kept sneezing all the time–– she had managed to place fourth, just below Oluo and Petra and one spot above Jett.

This year, though, things were going to be different. It was now second nature to be up in the air with her 3DMG and she had greater strength and stamina than most of the cadets, bar some buffer male trainees. Her swordsmanship had improved from holding the swords awkwardly (though it had felt just _right_ if only the blades were a bit shorter and throwable) to having a graceful form even midair.

The last test exercise was simple: land as many hits as possible in the wooden titan course. At the moment, it didn't matter where, even if the spot usually killed a regular cadet, because they were practicing how to successfully mix the 3DMG with attacking. It was uncomfortable, slashing anything meanwhile they were almost ten meters above ground and being held only by two wires. It was a combination of trust and instinct, something many lacked.

Oluo was currently up, using every single tree to his advantage and moving from titan to titan with astonishing speed. If there was anybody who made a suitable rival in her class, it was definitely Oluo. His form, strength, and ambition evenly matched hers. Sakura had begrudgingly admitted a few months ago that maybe they were friends, much to Jett and Petra's delight, and Amina's amusement.

In the end, he landed a grand total of fourteen hits out of twenty possible, the class record. Emil nodded gruffly towards Oluo and wrote something on a notepad, most likely a commentary of the performance as well as the grade. Now that they were second-years, it would include a comparison to last year's test as well as possible areas to improve on.

He walked smugly back to her, a stupid smirk plastered on his face. Sakura and the rest of the Trainees Corps Class were already used to his cocky demeanor, and there was nothing anyone could do about it other than resent him for it because he was _that_ good.

"Did you see that? Oh, of course you did. Who didn't?" Petra smacked him in the back of the head and scowled at him when he yelped. "Ow! Petra! What was that for?"

"What have we said about humility?"

"That it's for the talentless? Ow! Stop it!"

Emil had decided to change things up and go from descending to ascending order based on last names. He called another cadet, who gave an impressive performance, and another, who only managed to land three hits, and another cadet, who lost a blade mid-flight, _and_ Oluo and Petra still kept bickering. It got to the point that both Jett and her teamed up to attract their attention, but it still didn't work. Sakura was about to smack them both in the head when she heard her last name coming from Emil.

_That_ shut them up. In fact, there was a pervasive silence spread throughout the Trainees Corps Class. Everyone knew she was socially distant because she trained heavily, though the reason was a mystery because she had not expressed a keen desire in joining the Military Police. She barely had time for relationships and only confided in her roommates, Amina and Petra. Things had changed after the first year, though. Her eyes had become a bit lighter and she seemed to smile more often, which made her more amiable to the crowd, but her closest friends just grew more worried as her demeanor became brighter.

She sent a hook to a tree and landed gently in a giant branch next to Emil Ernst. "Land as many hits as you can. If you miss a titan, you can't go back, so I suggest you be careful about things."

Sakura nodded firmly and analyzed her surroundings, looking for the nearest titan. Emil blew the whistle, leaving her sensitive ears ringing, and she aimed her grappling hook to a tree a couple of meters away and was off.

It started out somewhat shaky. The experience was different, because she was used to fighting in the ground her whole life. Being up in the air was _too_ much freedom. She missed hitting the first titan, and she barely managed to land a hit on the second one, only to be so distracted that she almost crashed into the other one. Sakura cursed under her breath in her native tongue and hastily attempted to regain her balance at the expense of hitting the fourth one.

She could almost _feel_ Oluo's smug grin.

Her grip on the handles tightened and she grit her teeth. She had hit one and missed three, not good considering that Oluo had missed all of his in the last five. If he beat her in this test, he would take the number one spot and remind her that she wasn't ready yet, wasn't strong enough to protect Mikasa, Eren, and Armin by herself. Chakra was _very_ useful, yes, but when fighting titans, she _needed_ the 3DMG and blades to slice the nape quickly and efficiently. Punching things solved half her problems; hacking solved the other.

After slashing a tendon, she went up a couple of feet and started landing hits on the arms and torsos of the ten-meter classes but unfortunately missed two when she gained height in between titans, upping her count to eleven hits and five misses. At this point she couldn't miss another titan if she wanted to beat Oluo and steal first place from the previous year's valedictorian, a twenty-two-year-old named Lars Kristof, who wasn't going to be valedictorian this year from their performance.

She landed a hit on its forehead but missed the sudden switch from ten-meter to four meter class and couldn't even nick the wood. Her stomach filled with dread and she cursed in Japanese. Had Eren been in its clutches, he would've been eaten. Not only that, but these wooden titans didn't move at all... This was nothing compared to the real world, and she was failing.

She broke two blades with the next titan, mostly because of her chakra-enhanced strength that had seeped through in her failure to control her anger and frustration. She sent her hook to a tree trunk and added the blades to the handles while she balanced herself on the trunk. There was one titan left that she had to hit in order to tie with Oluo. Her time was around his, since both had sped through the course at the expense of accuracy, but there was only something that she could do and that was to show better mastery of her swordsmanship skills than Oluo.

Stopping had broken her tempo, but at least she could calculate how high she would need to go in order to hit the nape of that twelve-meter class. She calculated how high she needed to go and sent her grappling hook to a tree around ten meters away and released the gas in her 3DMG, speeding towards the titan faster than usual to make up for lost time.

It was only when she was a couple of meters away that she realized she miscalculated how high she needed to be and was over by just half a meter, but far away enough that her blades would definitely miss the target.

Her chakra got the better of her and suddenly she wanted to try something new. There were no repercussions in the secret department, since Emil Ernst was keeping his distance and her classmates were many kilometers away. She retrieved the wires from the tree they were attached to and she was falling, but she still wasn't going to be able to hit the wooden titan. But what her mind didn't remember her body sure did, because she slashed the blade midair and a gust of wind was released from a blade in a neat arc that hit the nape of the titan a bit shallowly, surely not enough to kill it, but the wind had nicked it enough to make it seem as if she had narrowly hit it.

She released the grappling hook to another tree and released gas to speed towards it, landing on a branch gently. Sakura released a deep breath she hadn't realized she had been holding in and stared at her left-hand sword, bewildered. So not only did she shoot torrents of water from her mouth, but she could also release wind from her blades? Just what the hell could she do?

" _ **Shinkuken.** " _That was the name of the technique she had used, even if she wasn't completely sure of how she knew the technique or where it had come from, but her arms and her chakra remembered releasing it various times. She grit her teeth and clenched her hands around the grip of her swords; so if her body remembered, why couldn't she?

"Ackerman!"

Emil Ernst's voice snapped her from her musings and she resisted the urge to smack her forehead. She was supposed to come back, yeah, to mark the end of the training. Now Emil would think she had taken longer and cheated, and that wasn't good at all.

He landed lightly next to her and eyed the titan critically, and then his eyes widened. "I saw that wild move you did but didn't think you managed to hit the titan. Then you disappeared and I thought the worst."

Sakura wiped her brow, eyeing her sweat with a little distaste. "I am fine, sir."

Emil studied her intensely. "You hit it in the nape. Granted, you need two slashes to kill one of these fuckers, but still... We haven't practiced that. You have impressed me. Good job, Ackerman."

That was the first "good job" anyone received from Emil Ernst, and she felt incredibly guilty that she only received it with the help of her chakra.

But she would be lying if she said she would refrain from honing that skill. Who knows, it might be useful one day when she was alone and one of those ugly shits was in the way between her and her survival.

* * *

Petra slammed the her clothes trunk and sat on it, heaving a long sigh. The eighteen-year-old stared at her pink-haired roommate, who was sprawled in her bed rereading the letter her sister had sent her for like the eighth time. It was only when she was reading one of Mikasa's letters that Petra saw Sakura smile in true happiness, as if she was transported to a better, happier world.

"I think I'm going to visit them," Sakura suddenly declared, sitting up and looking down from her topmost bunk bed. "I couldn't go last time because I didn't have any money, but I saved some from all the work I did last summer and I think I have enough to buy my way into a cart."

Petra frowned. "I thought you relaxed last summer."

Sakura smiled sheepishly and shrugged, though she didn't seem embarrassed from lying to her about what she did last summer. Petra had invited her to spend her time with her and her dad in their home in Honig. Her father had been looking forward to meeting the famous Sakura, from whom he had heard nothing but good things in Petra's letters. She had declined, stating that the year had burned her out and she wanted to do nothing but unwind, but she obviously hadn't done that, and she apparently didn't feel remorse for lying to her.

She had to admit she felt a little hurt and betrayed but she pushed it down, thinking about all the good things Sakura had done compared to the bad ones. Besides, it's not like she had done anything bad; she had done something quite noble, in a way. But the hurt mostly came from the lie. Why had she kept the truth from her, especially when it was something as selfless as that?

"I still think it's a bit dangerous to buy a trip from a stranger."

Sakura raised a pink eyebrow at her. "I'm not exactly someone you can easily take advantage of."

Petra resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She hated it when she got like this. "Sakura, we have one month off. Why don't you come with me to Honig, we get you a horse all for yourself, you come back to Honig with the horse, and we return back to camp together? It's much safer that way."

The twenty-one-year-old frowned, her eyes pensive. Petra knew she had given her a good offer, especially when she mentioned giving Sakura a horse all for herself. That was a luxury not many had, but the independence was desired by almost everyone. The class's valedictorian needed it the most considering the farm her siblings were located in was far ways off from the nearest city of commerce, where those carts usually dropped travelers. She would either need to hitch another ride or, worse, walk all the way to the farm.

"Sounds good, but why are you so into making me come with you to Honig?"

"Is it so wrong that I want to take my best friend along with me to my hometown?"

Sakura recoiled and blinked slightly, her gaze bewildered. "You consider me your best friend?"

Now Petra really did roll her eyes. She glared at her and crossed her arms, suddenly irritated. "Seriously? You're asking me that after spending two years in this hell? What's wrong with you?"

She blushed slightly and looked down, a bit ashamed. "I'm sorry... I just didn't think––"

"Stop thinking and start feeling." Sakura snapped her head towards her, confused and at the same time fascinated. Petra added a bit hesitantly, "Not everyone in this world is against you."

Her mouth opened slightly and she swallowed a lump that had formed in her throat. The pink-haired woman looked away, ending the conversation, and Petra stood up and finished packing her things to her other smaller trunk.

"I'll go with you," she whispered.

Petra twirled towards her and was surprised to see slightly teary eyes. Knowing better than to question anything, she smiled warmly and softly said, "That's the right answer."

* * *

The ride to Honig had only taken a day, since their training camp was located in the center between Maria and Sina. Summer was nice, not too cold but not too hot, the perfect temperature. That combined with the beautiful mountains made the ride one of the most relaxed, beautiful journeys Sakura had ever embarked in, and she had had many compared to the average citizen, though perhaps not for the best reasons: she had traveled from the Ackermans' home to the Jaegers', then to the refugee place and finally to the 102nd Trainee Corps camp.

They entered the city, and it was just like how Petra described and more. There was a very noticeable _stench_ which occurred when too many people lived too close together, but other than that the city was bustling with more energy than even Shiganshina. The overall demeanor was a bit rougher, if the expressions on the citizens were anything, but it was definitely understandable, considering what happened two years ago.

"Ah, it's good to be back," Petra murmured contentedly.

"Why do you say so?"

"My dad is moving to the Karanase District this year. He says business is better there, but I'm not too sure. So it's nice to be back before he leaves."

Something was bothering Sakura, and she decided to ask before she said something wrong later on. "Um, Petra...Why don't you talk about your mother?"

Her amber eyes saddened a bit and she smiled sadly. "She died ten years ago from an illness... I don't like being reminded of that."

"Oh." She remembered Helsa, Mikoto, and Kalura, all of them with their special warmth and legacies that had been passed on to her. They entrusted her with so much in such a short time frame, something that made them _mothers_ to her in their own way. "Losing a mother is always hard."

Petra looked at her sympathetically. "You lost your mom too?"

Sakura nodded, refraining from telling her exactly how many times. "But we shouldn't talk too much about that. We're visiting your dad, right? It's a happy occasion!"

She looked momentarily surprised but then she smiled widely and nodded along with her. Just then the cart came to a stop and the driver told them they reached their destination. Petra thanked him and paid him his money and they were soon on the way, Petra roaming the streets with expertise and Sakura following behind helplessly.

The eighteen-year-old stopped in front of a nice, well-kept home that reminded her a lot of the Jaegers' home, making her assume that Petra's barber shop made more than what she had previously let her know.

Petra knocked a couple of times and waited impatiently for her dad to open the door. The door opened slowly and revealed a man that was quickly tackled by his overly-excited daughter. The man laughed heartily and lifted off her feet with a bit too much effort.

"Oh, wow, Petra! You sure have gotten heavy!"

"Dad!"

Mr. Ral put his daughter down and looked at Sakura for a second before offering her a warm smile and an extended hand, which she eagerly took. He had his daughter's honeyed hair and light blue eyes, meaning Petra had her mother's eyes. His forehead and the corners of his mouth had wrinkles, possibly betraying his youthfulness.

"Hello, you must be Sakura, correct? My name is Philip Ral, very pleased to meet Petra's dear friend."

Sakura let his hand go and smiled warmly at the older man. "The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Ral."

"Oh, please, you kids calling me Mr. Ral sure makes me feel old. Please, call me Philipp."

"Very well, Mr. Philipp."

Petra and her father shared a look at her stubbornness but they only shrugged and later laughed. Even though Sakura was the source of their mirth, she felt absolutely happy with it, glad to have been included so easily and naturally into their routine.

They were just in time for dinner, and Philipp cooked for them one of the most delicious steaks she had ever tasted, which were few but still, it was very good. Philipp asked about how things had gone this year and Petra boasted about her fourth rank and Sakura meekly admitted that she had placed first. The dinner was jovial, since they shared countless stories of their time in camp and of their friends, particularly Oluo. Petra whined about how much he had to baby him and Sakura complained about his cockiness, but they both grudgingly admitted he was one of their closest friends.

The house only had two rooms, which meant that Sakura and Petra had to share room, much to their _distaste_. With the knowledge that they didn't have to wake up at the crack of dawn's ass, the girls spent the whole night giggling and talking about silly things. Petra admitted her crush towards Jett and Sakura replied in a deadpan that she had known for a _long_ time and that Petra did a shitty job hiding it.

To say Petra was mortified was an understatement, but the night overall was very enjoyable and Sakura had never felt so free and relaxed before in her life. Maybe she should've let Petra in much earlier to save herself much of last year's grief.

* * *

"Are you sure you know where you're going?"

Sakura gave her an exasperated look. "Yes, _Mom_ , I checked like ten times and confirmed the existence of the farm."

Petra raised her hands in a placating manner. "All right, all right, I just wanted to make sure you didn't get lost. It'll take you like two days to get there, but you should be fine."

"I'll be back in two weeks, hopefully. Even if I'm not back you go on ahead, okay?"

"Saying that doesn't really assuage my worries."

"Oh, wow, look at you using big words."

"Shut up and stop trying to distract me, Sakura! It's not working."

Sakura laughed and her horse whinnied loudly and started moving around. "Ho, ho. You sure this animal won't just drop me?"

Petra glared at her and harrumphed. "You're the one that rented her."

Her clutch on the reins tightened and she nodded in agreement. "True, true. Well, I better be off if I want to make it halfway by dusk. See you later, Petra!"

"Good luck and I hope you have a safe trip!"

"Thanks!"

The kunoichi nudged the horse's sides with her foot and the horse was off. She had to admit it had taken her a couple of days to get used to riding, but both Philipp and Petra were good teachers and she had gotten the hang of it. Sure, she couldn't do anything but stay on top of the horse and she could remain balanced even with a harsh trot, but that was it.

Regardless of her mild incapability to ride, her horse was powerful and good. She sure needed to thank the Rals when she came back for giving her such a beauty and finding her at such an affordable price. Not only that, but Petra had lent her some riding clothes, because there was no way in hell she was riding with a skirt. Thus she had been given a pair of pants and boots, a long-sleeved shirt and a cloak just in case it rained. She had two sets of clothes and a pair of pajamas in her bag along with the presents she brought Eren, Mikasa, and Armin.

She bought them with the leftover money she had, and now she wasn't sure she had enough to pay for food for the next two weeks, but she wasn't too worried about that. She couldn't help but be excited to give Eren one of the Survey Corps cloaks she had borrowed –– read, _stolen––_ from one of the training camps leftover clothes. She bought Armin a book about exploration which would've been worth a fortune had it not been talking about exploring the _outside_ world. It was in the banned book sections in one of the bookstores, and people had eyed her suspiciously for buying it, but she couldn't care less because Armin would be happy to receive this.

Mikasa's gift had been difficult, which brought upon a bout of nostalgia considering she had been in this position around four years ago. In the end she had decided to buy her a plain necklace with a simple oval pendant but asked a seasoned blacksmith to inscribe the kanji for her name on it and the kanji for her mother's name in the back. She wanted to complete the present by buying her three bamboo hats, her namesake, but unfortunately bamboo apparently didn't exist anywhere near them. However, she still contended the necklace would brighten her enough, even if Eren's red scarf hid it.

The more Sakura rode, the more experience she gained from it. There was a point when the horse surpassed her chakra-enhanced speed, which was quite the feat. However they had to rest a lot and the horse was very demanding of water, but she had a good reason considering they were riding hard.

Sakura stopped in a small town which barely had one hundred people. The perk of stopping in such a desolate town was that the inn was dirt cheap, even if the service wasn't great. Still, Sakura couldn't really complain considering she had a bed and had breakfast guaranteed and that was all she needed.

She was about to fall asleep when she heard the frantic neighs of her horse outside. Sakura thanked her laziness for not switching into her pajamas and hurriedly put on her boots, scampering outside to make sure her partner was fine.

The kunoichi groaned when she saw three men trying to steal her horse. She should've seen it coming, she really should've been more aware of the dangers of journeying, but she had been lulled into a false sense of security because of this rundown town. Maybe that's how they made ends meet, by stealing from the odd traveler that came their way. Her pride as a kunoichi was wounded, and she had to see the situation rectified.

Sakura cleared her throat and the three men stopped at their tracks. "You have a lot of gall trying to steal from a sleeping person."

"Look, girl, just go back to your room and we promise to not kill you."

She snorted, thinking it was cute that these men were threatening her. "Look, I'm feeling merciful today. Leave right now and I won't pursue you."

Her enhanced eyesight allowed her to see one of the men take out a firearm and aim at her. "Look, bitch, our patience is running so unless you want to have your brains plastered on the wall, I suggest you let us go."

"Your first incorrect assumption was that you would get to fire."

Before even waiting for their reply she launched herself at them, using chakra to amplify her speed. The men stood no chance against her and she quickly disarmed them, perhaps throwing a mild kick or punch here and there that left them incapacitated. They let the horse go and she sped away, quickly leaving the small town and her master. Sakura scowled at her coward horse and promised to give her quite the talk once she found her.

Four more chakra signatures got nearer to her and she realized a bit too late that she was surrounded from both sides. Two men closed in from one side of the road and the other two from the side where her horse had escaped to. The bandits she had taken down where groaning on the floor, one of them clutching his privates. The other four accomplices wordlessly aimed their firearms at her.

They started shooting at her, but they only shot at a puff of smoke. Sakura's body flicker technique had been a bit rusty the first time she used it, but training so many times in the mountain by the camp had honed her skills to the point that it looked as if she teleported to another place. She was now on the roofs, staring at the men as her mind formulated a plan. She herself was in no particular danger, but that didn't mean the townspeople weren't. Even if she had her suspicions that the town itself was behind the robbery, she still didn't want to be wrong and unnecessarily cause someone's death.

However, she wasn't fast enough to disarm both sides of bandits, since they were very far away from each other and although she could take care of that issue by simply killing them, she didn't want to spill any blood that night.

_Bird_... her body whispered and her hands unwillingly made the seals. _Hare... Horse..._ She body flickered behind the bandits by the town's exit and completed the hand seals with _Ram_. " _ **Futon: Kyoryokuna Fuha.** " _She breathed in and expelled a great gust of wind from her mouth, blowing the bandits and making them crash on the ground several meters away. It would take them several minutes to recover from such a crippling hit, and by then they might be in shackles and she very far away.

She gathered her things from her room and set out in search of her mode of transportation. Looking for the chakra signature of a specific animal was hard, but looking for the chakra of a specific species wasn't; for example, flies didn't have the same amount of chakra as horses did. Since not many horses wandered around in the wilderness at these hours of the night, it was very easy to spot her white mare grazing in a nearby field.

She approached her slowly lest she scare her. Luckily the mare seemed to remember her, because she didn't bolt or try to attack her. Sakura sighed and started running her fingers through her mane, trying to calm her down. " _What a troublesome night, right?"_ she spoke to her softly in her native tongue. " _I don't get to speak this language very often anymore... In fact, there are times I catch myself thinking in German and I don't have to translate what I have to say in my mind. It should make me happy, but for some reason I think that I'm getting farther away from who I am... No, who I_ **used** _be. Is that bad?_ "

She chuckled softly to herself and started patting the rest of her body. " _Ah, and here I am, talking to a horse. You know, I thought I wasn't going to name you because I wasn't going to see you very often, but I've grown fond of you. And since I am speaking to you in my native tongue, it's only fitting that I name you in Japanese, right? Well, you're mostly white, though you have some dirt here and there, but you're still mostly white. So I guess I'll call you White from now on, okay? I guess I'm no better than Oluo and that brat I saved in Beinn."_

Shiro's heartbeat started slowing down after Sakura's ministrations and she relaxed enough to allow her to mount her again. Getting on Shiro was hard to do in public, mostly because she was _almost_ five-foot-two, but out here in the wild she had no qualms about using chakra as a little boost. She nudged Shiro to start walking and luckily she obeyed, albeit a bit slowly. It was okay, though; she was in no rush at the moment.

She had paid a grand total of three gold coins for the dinner, stay, and breakfast at the inn, and she only had the dinner. It aggravated her greatly that she had spent so much money and hadn't even reaped all the benefits. Still, she couldn't have stayed. Luckily it was dark enough for the bandits to miss the color of her hair, but they might recognize her voice, and she didn't feel like becoming a scapegoat for humanity just yet.

Her mare's speed continued slowing down, something Sakura had predicted considering they had ridden for almost ten hours. However, she had to be picky with the area she chose, because if a town was dangerous, there's no saying how risky being out in the open was.

" _You know, one of the ninja arts is the Illusionary Techniques. If I could only remember one, I'm sure I wouldn't be so worried. Maybe it's because I didn't know one before I lost my memory? But that's weird, since I have good chakra control and I know Illusionary Techniques require good chakra control. Maybe I ran out of 'You Get A Free Jutsu' cards for the month, eh? Oh, well, look at that, there's a hill over there. We can rest at the bottom, since it's a bit far away from the road. Come, White!"_

The hill was small, which was a small blessing because she wasn't sure she would be able to handle riding a horse down a mount or anything bigger than that. She got off from Shiro and started relaxing her again, coating her fingertips with a bit of chakra to make the desired effect faster. In a couple of minutes the mare relaxed fully and dropped to the ground, falling asleep shortly afterwards. Sakura couldn't contain her drowsiness any longer and laid her head against Shiro's belly and descended into a light sleep.

* * *

_"How do you get animals to like you so much."_

_"I don't understand the question. Animals love you."_

_"Well, yeah, but that was only after Kurama let me sign the contract with the kitsune that animals started paying attention to me. It took_ two _contracts for them to like me that much."_

_"Well, there's your answer."_

_"What?! Sakura-chan? When––"_

_"Come on, Shishou wanted to see us, Naru––"_

* * *

She was cranky and tired, but there was no one to blame for her state except the thugs that had made her flee the town. There were times when she wanted to get off Shiro and start punching the earth, but since she was so close to her destination, she didn't really want to put her identity in danger. Besides, she was making record time considering she barely slept at all and only waited for her mare to recover her strength, trying to remember what she had dreamt about in the meantime. They had been on their way before sunrise.

The map the Rals had given her was a bit old, but she found her way again after asking a passerby tinker. Apparently she was only thirty minutes away, and that was great because she had missed breakfast. Her stomach was growling and Shiro's pace was slowing down, no doubt hungry and tired from the arduous work she had put her through.

" _Don't worry, White. We'll be there soon and I promise to give you half my food for being such a good girl."_

They reached the farm in forty minutes, but she was only happy to see that the place existed to begin with. People were working on the fields intensively, ploughing the land or watering new crops or checking how the vegetables were growing. These farms provided food for most of the residents inside Wall Rose as well as the cadets. Sakura felt immensely grateful for them, because if it weren't for their hard work,, she might not have a warm stew waiting for her at the cabin after a hard day of work.

An short woman approached her. Her dark eyes were wary and her face was marred by harsh lines, no doubt scars from age. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to visit my siblings."

"No visitors in working hours. We can't afford distractions."

She glared at the woman, and Sakura was inwardly happy to be mounted on a horse because it made her much more intimidating. "Look, I rode her for almost two days straight and I want to see my siblings. I'm not in a good mood, I didn't get much sleep, and it will make me feel **much** better if I get to talk to them. I don't want to be mad." _  
_

"Still, no distractions. So unless you work here on your stay, I don't see why I should let you see your siblings."

"Feed me and my horse and I'll work here for as long as I can."

The woman raised her eyebrows and then pointed at Shiro. "How much does it eat?"

"Two humans' worth."

"Then your work better be worth three persons' or this deal won't work."

Sakura raised her head haughtily and smirked slowly at the woman. "I'm worth more than that."

The woman scoffed but Sakura knew she had taken the bait. "Well if you're lying I'll just kick you both out. The stable is that way and you'll find tools in that big house over there. You can search for your siblings afterwards."

The pink-haired girl nodded and rode Shiro to the stable. Most of the horses there were old and thin, a sharp contrast of the strong mare that had carried her for two days. She dismounted once she reached the entrance of the building and led Shiro to an empty stall near the end. She grabbed the bag with presents and removed the saddle, throwing it outside of the stall, where it wasn't so dirty. Then she gathered the hay and filled the bucket with water, and Shiro paid attention to Sakura no longer.

She chuckled. "You sure are hungry, right? I'll come check on you tonight. Be good." She closed the stall door and left, glad to be away from the awful smell of horse poop.

If she hadn't spent two years with the Ackermans' she would've been clueless as to what to do with the tools in the storage house. She just grabbed a hoe and left, because it wasn't as if she was going to do any work at the moment anyway.

Even though she had memorized their chakra signature, it was a bit hard to pinpoint their exact location when they were so close and so many people where gathered around. She knew they were close by, though, and it wouldn't take long for them to spot her with her pink hair. Still, she wanted to surprise them, because she hadn't let them know she was coming, and the only way to do that was to remain hidden.

It wasn't hard for a kunoichi to remain hidden.

Most of the kids were working on seeding the fields, simply because it was an important work that didn't require much muscle. She spotted them almost immediately, and she was glad to see them together even after all this time. They were engrossed in their work, which was excellent since it allowed her to sneak behind them without the use of any of her kunoichi abilities.

"Oh, wow, in a year or two you're going to be taller than me." The three children stiffened immediately and Sakura repressed a giggle. "Except you, Armin. It might take you a bit longer but I'm sure you'll get there."

The three turned around and stared at the kunoichi, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and now Sakura did burst out laughing. The kids snapped out of their stupor and tackled her immediately, Armin hugging her left side, Eren her right, and Mikasa the front. Her chuckles were warm and she ruffled their heads affectionately, especially Armin's, who was now much more comfortable in her presence.

"We didn't know you were coming," Mikasa whispered, her face still buried in the crook of her neck.

Sakura placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. "That was the point of the surprise, dear sister. Now let's get out of here and lead me to your rooms. I have things for you."

Sneaking from their work wasn't hard, considering the sheer amount of people in the fields. Sakura had expected them to protest, but she was glad her wards appreciated her more than labor.

All the children shared the same quarters, meanwhile men and women had different dormitories. Sakura suspected she would be lumped with the adults, but she had her ways of escaping undetected. After all, she worked all last summer and traveled with little sleep for almost two days just so that she could spend some measly days with her dependents.

She sat at the edge of Eren's small bed and the other three crowded around her, eagerly waiting for her next to move. "Before we continue, I have gifts for you three." Sakura reached into her bag and got out an old book, which Armin almost snatched from her hands, much to her amusement. He opened to book immediately and started scanning the pages, his eyes gaining a new light at the pictures. "I don't know how true those are, and don't ask me about the validity because I don't know who the author is, but––"

"It's awesome, Sakura," Armin interrupted in an awed voice. His normally cautious blue eyes were bursting with happiness. "Thank you so much."

"You're very welcome." She got out the Survey Corps cloak and handed it to Eren. He took it from her slowly, reverently, and admired the Wings of Freedom in the back. "Say it's from a deceased family member because I stole it."

Eren grinned at her and immediately put on the cloak, flourishing it dramatically for them to see. It pained Sakura to say it, but the Wings of Freedom suited him, as much as she wanted to keep him safe inside the walls. "This is the best gift, Sakura. Even when I get my own, I won't replace this one."

She grinned and searched for the last present. It took a bit of rummaging around because the necklace was small, but once she felt the cool metal she quickly grasped it and handed it to her surrogate sister. Mikasa traced the kanji lines, as if familiarizing herself with them again. "Mikasa," she whispered, her gray eyes widening and her mouth forming a small smile at the detail.

"Look at the back."

The girl turned the necklace around and studied the kanji. "Life...? No... **Mikoto**... You missed something, though. _Cherry blossom._ "

Sakura's eyes softened and her heart clenched slightly. She thought the kids were going to resent her for being away from them so long, for not fully carrying out her promise to provide and keep them safe, but she was glad they were so understanding and open. Her promise to protect them kept her alive, gave her life meaning beyond survival. Should they reject her...

She didn't want to think about it.

Armin and Eren were understandably confused, but they didn't seem to mind being out of the loop. Sakura cleared her throat and turned their attention to them, though her wandering eye noticed Mikasa trying to put on the necklace by herself and failing miserably. She chuckled and helped her out and was elated to see that the necklace rested on top of her red scarf, not hidden by it.

"Tell me, how has your day been?"

The four started exchanging stories, talking about everything and nothing at the same time. The pre-teens complained about the hard work and the treatment they received, but at the same time they were glad they received food and shelter, something most didn't have at the moment. However, they were more interested in what Sakura had been doing, particularly Eren. She told them almost everything about camp, how physically demanding it was (and she asked them if they had been training and much to her surprise they nodded firmly) and how many talented people there were.

"But you're ranked highly, right?" Eren asked in a hopeful voice.

Sakura smirked, not at all humble in front of her wards. "I'm first, actually."

That changed the whole mood of the conversation, especially from Eren's part. He wanted to know _everything_ , all the tricks, all the obstacles, all the requirements. His determination was admirable, but Sakura only felt more and more apprehension at this. Eren and Armin were currently arguing about the best time to switch to 3DMG fighting when Sakura interrupted them.

"Hey, guys... I've been thinking... Once I join the military, I'll get paid. I'm sure I can pull some strings to get all of us to Sina if I get in to the Military Police. You guys wouldn't have to join at all, we could all live comfortable lives, and we would never have to worry about losing each other ever again. What do you guys say? It sounds like a good life, right?"

Mikasa and Armin seemed to be considering the proposition, but Eren vehemently shook his head and tightened the Survey Corps' cloak around him. "Sorry, Sakura. I know you want to keep us safe, and I know you don't want to lose us, but we are not meant to live a comfortable life. Everything we owned, everything we were supposed to be, was taken away from us by the titans. I dream of killing titans, I want to breathe titan blood, I wish to cut titans down. My whole life revolves around titans, as despicable as it is. The only way I can be happy is by joining the Survey Corps."

If the other two had been considering her option, they were now in agreement with Eren's feelings. "I want to see the outside world," Armin admitted in a small voice. "Even at the cost of my life, I want to see what's outside these walls. I can't live inside any longer."

Sakura nodded slowly, slightly dejected and increasingly concerned. Her precious people were putting their lives in danger for the sake of revenge, exploration, and a will to protect, in Mikasa's case. "It was worth a shot," she said with a slight smile. Her wards stared at her with happiness and guilt, which just made her even more upset to cause them pain. "Well, let's go see how much you've been practicing! You three better not disappoint me!"

* * *

The next two weeks were considered the happiest after the Shiganshina attack. She had missed the three terribly, their antics, their determination, the history they shared. Not only that, but the three of them knew about her status as a kunoichi. Sakura had told Armin after being convinced by Eren that he was very trustworthy and just as deserving of knowing the truth. And indeed, Armin hadn't looked at her as nothing but an older sister ever since.

She showed them **_Futon: _Kyoryokuna Fuha__** and as much as she wanted to show them **_Shinkuken_** she couldn't because she lacked a sword. Nevertheless, they were very impressed and amazed and only asked more questions. The wonder didn't come from the ninjutsu's ability, because blowing gusts of wind wasn't going to do anything to a seven-meter-tall titan, but it was still very different and incredible.

Just to show that old woman, Sakura's work was truly worth three people's. Not only did she not grow tired, but she was so quick and efficient that she always finished first. She was such an asset that they even let her get away with a few things, like sleeping in the children's quarter to be close to her wards and even working side-by-side with them.

However, all good things came to an end, and soon it was time for Sakura to leave and finish her last year in the 102nd Trainee Corps Class. However, she had decided to not leave alone, and after convincing the old woman to part with a cart she was never going to use, she took the kids with her to Honig, an enlistment site for the 104th Trainee Corps Class. The trip was going to take four days instead of its usual five, but that was fine since Shiro was well-fed and Sakura still had a week off before they started again.

"I can't believe you convinced her to let us go," Armin said from his spot in the cart.

She wanted to turn around and look at them, but riding Shiro required her full attention, especially because she was carrying precious cargo in the back. "I have my ways. Not everyone is as pigheaded as you three."

Sakura took a different route, since she was still a bit wary of stopping in that sketchy town where she had been robbed. She ran many more risks with this decision, and one time they barely made it to an inn before it closed, but in the end it paid off and they reached Honig in record time. She returned Shiro to her rightful owner, a sad affair seeing that she had grown very fond of the mare, and sold the cart she had carried the kids in for a whooping twenty gold and thirty silver coins.

She took her little ducklings on different errands now that she had money. She first took them to enlist in the center of the town, much to their excitement and nervousness. The cart was going to leave to the 104th Trainee Corps camp in five days, at noon. Then she went to pay a room for five days and six nights at the inn, including breakfast and dinner, which drained her of most of her funds, but she still had ten gold to spend, not counting the money she had reserved for the ride back to her own camp.

"Well, I still have some money, so is there anything you guys want?"

"Can you buy us some ale?" Eren asked, a mischievous hint to his voice.

Sakura whacked the back of his head. "Just because you enlisted doesn't mean that you get to drink, you idiot."

"But we're men now! Well, men and woman!"

The kunoichi snorted. "Men? Woman? Eren, you three still blush when I say 'sex.'" She turned to them just when she finished the sentence and felt a surge of satisfaction when their cheeks turned red. It had been very satisfying to explain to them what sex was during their trip, because apparently many men around them had been complaining about how _they didn't get it in that often_. "See, you three are still giggling children."

"Why did you have to tell us that?" Eren moaned.

"I could've gone my life without knowing that," Armin continued, dismayed.

"I'll make sure to remind you that you said that when you're older, Armin," she muttered, feeling even giddier when his cheeks turned an even brighter shade of red.

"No need to be so cruel, Sakura," Mikasa murmured, still a bit flustered.

"Then don't ask to get drunk, brats. Ah, I almost forgot I have to let Petra know I'm back. C'mon, let me introduce you to our class's fourth best cadet."

* * *

They spent the next three days together, enjoying their time together because who knew when they were going to see each other again? However, soon it was the time for Sakura to leave to camp, though they made sure to not have any tearful good-byes.

"We'll see each other soon, okay?" Sakura promised, hugging each one of them tightly.

"Sakura... What branch are you joining?" Mikasa asked, clutching her necklace tightly.

She sighed and gazed at the blue sky. It was a beautiful day with no clouds and a mild temperature. There was no better day for traveling than this one. "You know, the world needs more Wings of Freedom flying in the sky." Getting the words out had been one of the hardest things in her life, because she was admitting defeat in trying to persuade them in joining the Military Police or not joining at all. But if she could not keep them out of danger, then she would have to do her very best in keeping them alive, and the only way to do that was by being by their side.

They smiled confidently at her, and they seemed genuinely happy in her choice.

"Then wait for us, okay?" Eren said with a grin. "No dying."

"I promise, no dying."

With one last hug, she left them at the inn's entrance and walked towards the Rals' house, where Petra was already waiting at the front. Her friend hugged her tightly, excited to see her again. "Ready for this?"

"Let's finish this year once and for all!"

**Author's Note:**

> I have joined AO3 now. I hope that posting The Vessel here will encourage me to write these chapters faster. I will post revised chapters of The Vessel here every week until I reach the last chapter I published. They will have additions and certain modifications the The Vessel in the other site lack, so if you're new or old, I would suggest sticking to this work.


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